•--  ^"■■~? 


^^' 


SOLILOQUY 


OF  A 


HERMIT 


#  ■            M 

! 

1 

I^^^^^HI 

1      i 

ItOJthc    'I^AICIS    POUYS 


:>i.;^F    PtW:Wu5 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
RIVERSIDE 


■-'\f' 


f- 


I 


f 

i 


THE  SOLILOQUY  OF  A  HERMIT 


PUBLISHER'S  NOTE 

TN  issuing  this  little  volume  adapted 
to  such  readers  as  are  interested  in 
original  religious  psychology,  the  pub- 
lisher wishes  to  announce  his  intended 
pubhcation  of  an  extraordinary  realistic 
novel  by  the  same  hand  entitled  "  Mr. 
Tasker's  Gods,"  which  should  appeal  to 
a  far  wider  public.  Such  pubhcation, 
however,  must  necessarily  depend  upon 
the  interest  excited  by  the  present  httle 
work. 


1 

E  - 

-  ■"■  A:,^^ . 

ll 

■r   ^ 

.w^— ■ 

*    .j^'^^^S^aBBSSS 

gi^iU 

P^ 

■-  ^f^-  • 

» 

1 

»           '              ~     *  ■, 

VI 

.W^ 

* 

ILujd 


fi^C 


r.?^ 


(P^)  i*. 


'; 


THE  SOLILOQUY  OF 
A  HERMIT 


BY 

THEODORE  FRANCIS  POWYS 


1916 

G.  ARNOLD   SHAW 

NEW  YORK 


COPYRIGHT,    1916 
BY    G.    ARNOLD    SHAW 


COPYRIGHT    IN    GREAT    BRITAIN 
AND    COLONIES 


Dedicated 

to  a  publisher  whose  humor  is  as 

kind  as  his  judgement  is  honest 

G.  ARNOLD  SHAW 


THE 
SOLILOQUY  OF  A  HERMIT 

"//e  that  acknowledgeth  the  Son, 
hath  the  Father  also.'' 

AM  I  a  fool  ?  Is  not  a  fool  the  best 
title  for  a  good  priest?  And  I  am 
a  good  priest.  Though  not  of  the  Church, 
I  am  of  the  Church.  Though  not  of  the 
faith,  I  am  of  the  faith.  Though  not 
of  the  fold,  I  am  of  the  fold;  a  priest 
in  the  cloud  of  God,  beside  the  Altar 
of  Stone.  Near  beside  me  is  a  flock  of 
real  sheep;  above  me  a  cloud  of  misty 
white  embraces  the  noon-day  light  of 
the  Altar.  I  am  without  a  behef;  —  a 
behef  is  too  easy  a  road  to  God. 

A  priest  has  liis  roots  in  the  deep 
darkness  of  human  desires;  his  place  is 
beside  the  Altar,  held  to  the  earth  bv 
twisted  roots;  the  priest  gives  to  man 
whom  he  cannot  love,   and    loves   God 


2  The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

whom  he  cannot  know.  The  priest 
points  ever  to  Christ,  and  tells  the 
people  to  love  Him;  but  to  love  one 
another  he  does  not  tell  them.  How 
can  he.^^  The  Master  alone  can  com- 
mand the  impossible ;  Christ,  who  knows 
only  Himself,  He  can  say  "Love  one 
another."  The  priest  can  only  say 
"Love  Christ."  He  knows  that  the 
people  can  never  love  one  another,  and 
that  if  they  could  love  one  another, 
there  would  be  no  need  for  them  to 
love   Christ. 

And  I,  the  priest,  will  tell  the  story. 
I  know  how  men  move  under  the  shadow 
of  the  moods  of  God,  and  I  know  how 
I  move.  Some  try  to  hide  in  the  Gar- 
den, and  some  try  to  hide  in  the  beast's 
belly.  I  have  tried  to  hide  amongst 
grassy  hills;  but  the  moods  of  God  have 
hunted  me  out.  The  proper  place  for 
a  priest  is  in  a  cave,  a  narrow  cave 
where  he  lies  with  his  back  against  a 
sharp  rock.  As  I  could  not  hide  from 
God,  I  tried  to  hide  from  myself,  and 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit  3 

watch  the  moods  as  they  passed  by. 
To  beheve  in  God  and  not  to  believe 
in  yourself,  is  the  first  duty  of  a  priest. 
There  is  no  need  to  fulfil  a  mood;  you 
get  far  more  of  the  truth  of  a  mood  if 
you  do  not  fulfil  it,  and  a  mood  is  often 
good  and  kindly  to  you  if  you  let  it 
enter  without  your  doing  anything  that 
it  moves  you  to  do.  A  priest  is  always 
a  priest,  on  a  throne;  or  if  upon  the 
gallows,  he  is  still  a  priest.  A  priest  is 
a  man  who  knows  the  workings  of  the 
moods  of  God. 

The  common  man,  the  happy  man, 
the  working  man,  the  immortal  man,  is 
dominated  by  one  mood,  so  that  he 
never  feels  God  but  in  one  way,  and 
whatever  condition  he  may  be  in,  tliis 
one  mood  holds  him  up.  Tliis  kind  of 
man  is  everywhere;  he  is  the  people;  he 
talks  about  "having  a  drink,"  "get- 
ting on  in  the  world,"  "writing  books," 
"buying  stocks  and  shares,"  "driving 
pigs  to  market,"  "sowing  red  wheat." 
He  may  be  in  a  palace,  or  at  the  bottom 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 


of  a  coal  mine,  or  in  a  clover  field,  or 
in  a  villa  at  Chiswick;  he  is  the  people, 
and  his  dominating  mood  is  the  getting 
mood. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  road  is  the 
priest.  He  is  vulnerable,  he  is  mortal; 
this  life  is  his  only  life,  he  is  not  im- 
mortal like  the  other  man;  the  only  im- 
mortahty  that  he  gets  is  by  beheving 
that  he  is  immortal;  his  children  are 
not  his  children,  and  his  hfe  is  not  his 
life,  it  is  God's.  He  is  the  soil  in  which 
God  practises  His  divine  moods;  His 
hating  moods,  His  loving  moods.  His 
cruel  moods.  The  other  man  is  domi- 
nated by  one  mood  all  his  hfe;  the 
manner  of  his  hfe  never  changes,  he 
moves  in  one  small  circle.  The  priest 
is  never  under  one  mood  for  long;  he  is 
always  breaking,  or  rather  being  broken, 
by  God.  God  takes  him  up  and  casts 
him  down,  and  pitches  him  from  one 
mood  into  another,  taking  care  that  no 
mood  lasts  that  the  priest  can  live  and 
feed  upon.     The  priest  prays;  he  tames 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Ilermii 


the  moods  of  prayer,  and  he  tries  to 
shut  up  the  bad  moods,  the  good  moods, 
all  the  moods,  in  the  Bible;  and  then 
he  tries  to  hide  the  Bible  in  the  Church. 
And  he  prays  all  through  the  bad  moods, 
even  when  they  bite  him  (and  moods 
can  bite),  and  he  waits  and  prays  till  a 
gentle  mood  comes  like  a  dove  from 
heaven;  then  he  rejoices  and  quietly 
eats  his  bread  like  any  other  m£ui. 

I  am  writing  about  myself.  I  am  the 
priest  that  I  talk  about.  When  I  speak 
about  the  priest  or  anything  about  the 
priest,  I  mean  myself.  I  was  never  put 
into  the  fold,  and  I  never  climbed  over 
the  wall;  I  never  knew  Latin;  I  have 
never  spoken  to  a  Bishop,  or  helped  a 
Dean  on  with  his  gaiters;  I  have  never 
tried  to  convert  any  young  lady  in  the 
street.  I  am  speaking  of  Rehgion  in  a 
book; — that  is  not  allowed,  but  what 
else  can  I  write  about .^  It  is  the  only 
subject  I  know  anything  about. 

At  the  same  time  there  are  things 
that  interest  me,  and  things  that  I  love. 


6  The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

I  love  a  broken  chair  that  is  worn 
through  to  the  wood;  it  is  a  chair  that 
can  tell  its  own  talc;  I  have  a  terror  of 
anything  that  is  sound  and  whole.  I 
love  a  broken  roller  left  in  a  field;  my 
little  boys  come  with  me  up  a  Httle  hill 
and  play  by  it;  it  is  left  in  a  field  that 
belongs  to  a  crippled  farmer,  a  weakly 
tottering  old  man,  crooked  and  bent; 
all  his  farm  tools  are  broken  and  tied 
up  with  string,  and  the  roller  is  the 
most  broken,  and  that  is  why  we  love 
it  the  best.  It  is  much  better,  I  have 
found,  to  love  a  chair  than  to  love  a 
person;  there  is  often  more  of  God  in 
a  chair,  and  God  often  rests  by  the 
side  of  the  old  roller  and  watches  my 
little  boys  play  and  the  old  farmer  at 
plough. 

The  moods  pass  over  me  and  I  must 
act  after  their  ruling.  I  hate  when 
they  hate,  I  love  when  they  love.  The 
wonderful  moods  carry  me  on,  and  do 
with  me  what  they  will.  When  an  evil 
day  comes,  it  is  the  mood  from  above 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermil  7 

that  is  evil;  when  the  earth  and  sky 
and  my  heart  are  bathed  in  sunbeams, 
God  is  in  a  shining  mood  above.  The 
moods  carry  me  away  in  the  night  and 
they  leap  upon  me  in  the  day,  and 
they  hold  me  down  in  the  evening,  or 
perhaps  let  me  wander  a  httle  way 
under  the  stars. 

I  have  voted  twice  at  the  elections, 
once  for  a  conservative  and  once  for  a 
liberal;  at  each  election  I  voted  ac- 
cording to  the  mood  that  I  was  in,  as 
everyone  ought  to.  Just  now  I  wear 
a  badge  of  an  order  of  Sociahsm,  and 
when  one  day  I  broke  my  spade  in 
trying  to  lift  up  a  dead  cherry-tree  in 
the  garden,  I  looked  at  my  badge  and 
wondered  what  it  meant  by  having  an 
arrow,  the  sun  and  the  world  upon  it. 
And  then  I  thought  of  the  people;  I 
know  a  little  about  the  people,  the 
people  that  slave  and  toil  and  tear  at 
each  other  with  the  claws  of  the  beast, 
and  the  beast  has  sharp  claws.  I 
know   their   ways   and   how   they   steal 


8  The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

the  moods  of  God;  they  will  not  allow 
the  moods  of  God  to  pass  freely  tlirough 
them  and  go. 

Once  I  said,  "I  love  poor  men." 
And  I  beheved  that  they  were  true, 
noble,  simple,  and  kind,  and  of  all  men, 
I  loved  most  the  men  in  the  fields;  I 
thought  that  the  gentle  life  they  led  in 
the  country  gave  their  minds  the  colour 
of  deep  grey  w  aters.  I  thought  that  poor 
people  dwelt  so  near  the  mud  that  they 
were  always  clean;  I  thought  that  only 
spoilt  children  were  cruel  and  ugly,  and 
that  all  the  poetry  of  the  world  came 
from  the  cottage. 

It  is  the  priest's  duty  to  dig  in  the 
clay  tlirough  which  the  moods  of  God 
pass;  he  must  foretell  how  the  clay 
pieces  will  behave  when  the  mystic 
winds  that  they  cannot  see  blow  them. 
It  is  well  that  he  preaches  of  one  that 
will  take  away  the  sins  of  the  world, 
but  if  that  One  would  take  the  good- 
ness of  the  world,  too,  he  would  find 
the  load   almost  as  hard   to  bear;    for 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Ilermil  q 

the  good  man  often  hides  beneath  liis 
goodness  an  ugly  little  devil  that  spits 
out  fire. 

Man  is  a  collection  of  atoms  through 
which  pass  the  moods  of  God,  —  a  ter- 
rible clay  picture,  tragic,  frail,  drunken, 
but  always  deep  rooted  in  the  earth, 
always  with  claws  holding  on  to  his 
life  while  the  moods  pass  over  him 
and  change  his  face  and  his  life  every 
moment.  The  people  of  the  earth  are 
clay  pieces  that  the  moods  of  God 
kindle  into  life. 

To  the  priest  every  man  is  a  rough 
soil  that  the  moods  of  God  pass  through, 
and  the  priest  knows  that  every  man 
will  clutch  what  he  can  hold  hke  a 
babe,  and  he  knows  that  where  the 
moods  of  God  are,  strange  things  will 
happen.  He  knows  that  the  world  is  a 
wild  mad  world,  a  world  that  cannot 
settle  into  peace,  that  cannot  quietly 
tend  its  garden  and  plant  the  herbs  of 
the  field.  In  the  moods,  in  my  moods, 
there  are  great  and  terrible  happenings. 


lo         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 


In  the  most  quiet  places  the  moods  of 
God  rend  and  tear  the  heart.  Every 
mood  that  passes  through  me  is  ter- 
rible, the  most  peaceful  happy  mood 
carries  the  heart-ache  beneath  it. 

In  looking  at  my  life,  as  indeed  in 
looking  at  anyone's  life,  I  see  the  de- 
sire to  do  something  so  that  the  moods 
may  pass  and  the  man  still  hve.  And 
I  think  that  I  can  also  understand  the 
idea  of  the  monk  in  a  cell,  or  the  her- 
mit in  a  wood,  for  these  allow  the 
moods  freely  to  pass  tlu-ough  them,  in 
order  that  they  may  catch  God  in  His 
own  thought.  In  the  common  longing 
to  do  something,  —  I  will  not  say  to  work, 
I  see  the  desire  to  escape  from  God. 
When  I  want  to  go  out  and  work  or 
even  to  help  my  neighbour,  my  reason 
is  that  I  want  to  hide  myself  from  the 
moods.  I  have  never  been  idle  —  no 
priest  ever  is;  my  sin  has  been  that  I 
have  sought  to  do  something;  not  that 
I  have  worked,  —  of  course  there  comes 
to  the  hand  of  everyone   something  of 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         ii 


the  common  burden,  — but  when  I  have 
sought  work,  it  has  been  as  a  means  of 
escape,  of  escape  from  tlie  moods  of 
God.  There  is  only  one  way  of  escape 
and  that  is  in  prayer.  I  will  call  it  the 
monk's  way;  only  the  monk's  way  is  no 
use  to  him  from  whom  God  hides  deep 
down  at  the  bottom  of  His  moods. 

All  human  laws  are  made  to  trap 
and  snare  God's  movements;  men  are 
always  trying  to  get  at  ease  with  them- 
selves and  away  from  His  terrible  ways. 
The  priest  learns  the  hard  law  of  men, 
and  he  feels  the  terrible  presence  of 
God;  from  men  he  is  given  poverty 
and  scorn,  and  from  God,  death.  He 
forgives  men,  and  he  takes  God's  gift, 
that  is  to  him  God's  best  gift;  he  trains 
himself  to  become  as  clay  in  the  hand 
of  the  potter,  to  take  the  mood  and 
the  day  and  the  chance  as  it  opens  out 
to  him,  to  walk  the  road  that  is  nearest 
before  him  and  to  keep  always  to  the 
left-hand  side  of  the  way,  to  accept  as 
they    choose   to    come-,    the    anger,    the 


12  The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

fretfulness,  the  joy,  the  hunger;  for 
each  is  a  sign,  if  it  be  not  the  reahty, 
of  the  moods  of  God.  I  have  learned 
to  know  that  though  I  cannot  touch 
the  power,  the  power  can  touch  me; 
that  is  as  far  as  I  dare  probe  into  the 
mystery.  I  am  not  evil  nor  good;  I  am 
just  my  own  clay  through  which  the 
moods  of  God  pass,  and  this  is  exactly 
the  case  with  my  brothers,  and  with 
everyone  else;  no  one  is  good  or  evil, 
we  are  all  just  our  own  clay. 

When  I  look  at  myself  before  a  glass 
I  am  not  pleased;  I  fear  I  cannot  look 
into  the  glass  and  say  to  myself,  "What 
a  fine  fellow!"  I  wish  I  could.  All  the 
same  I  am  wilhng  to  put  up  with  my- 
self; I  am  not  yet  tired  of  the  sun;  I 
hke  still  to  feel  the  movement  of  being, 
and  to  know  that  another  spring  has 
come;  I  love  myself  enough  to  love  the 
world. 

I  have  discovered  that  all  movement 
is  a  begetting  and  creating,  and  that 
when  I  only  move  my  feet  I  bring  to 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Her  mil  i3 

birth  new  wonders.  We  cannot  over- 
rate too  much  mere  existence.  Simply 
to  be  set  dancing  by  the  sun  is  some- 
thing. I  love  to  preach,  but  the  only 
person  I  ever  preach  to  is  myself,  be- 
cause I  am  the  only  person  that  I  have 
ever  met  who  knows  how  to  attend  to 
a  sermon.  I  preach  to  myself,  and  I 
am  interested  to  get  to  the  bottom  of 
my  sins.  I  find  my  sins  are  deep 
enough  to  be  interesting.  I  love  to 
hate,  to  desire,  to  envy,  to  bear  malice 
in  my  heart.  I  am  glad  that  I  have 
these  feehngs;  I  do  not  want  to  love  my 
neighbour.  I  prefer  to  mildly  hate  him. 
When  the  mood  of  gentle  tolerance 
comes  to  me  I  take  it  and  love  even 
God. 

I  have  not  fallen  into  my  worst  sin. 
My  greatest  temptation  has  always 
been  to  work,  to  go  with  other  men  into 
the  great  labour  market  of  the  world, 
and  be  given  my  place.  The  priest  is 
lower  than  the  lowest  labourer,  and  if 
he  can  only  find  men  and  no  God  in 


i4         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

the  earth,  woe  be  to  him,  he  will  cer- 
tainly find  himself  betrayed. 

Once  I  thought  I  was  wise,  wiser 
than  the  wise  men  of  old,  "It  was  not 
for  me,"  I  said,  "to  come  out  from 
the  same  door  wherein  I  went."  It  is 
well  to  break  your  head  against  all  the 
walls  that  you  can,  while  you  are  young, 
so  that  when  you  grow  old  you  can  slay 
yourself  quietly  in  your  own  garden. 

I  wonder  what  to  most  men  is  the 
pleasantest  thing  they  do.  I  know 
that  I  am  happiest  when  I  am  mend- 
ing my  garden  raihngs;  they  are  very 
old  and  very  much  out  of  repair;  every 
labourer  that  has  come  past  for  the 
last  ten  years  has  had  something  rude 
to  say  about  them;  and  if  they  see  me 
in  the  garden  they  stop  and  advise  me 
to  have  iron  railings;  and  once  a  young 
sheep  dealer  told  me  I  ought  to  build 
a  wall.  But,  alas,  I  am  no  lover  of  walls 
that  keep  out  the  sunshine,  and  I  have 
a  vast  hatred  for  iron  raihngs,  and 
why   should  I  not    continue    my    hap- 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit  i5 

piness  by  mending  my  wooden  ones 
with  string.  But  people  do  not  like  my 
way.  And  if  the  Parish  Council  had  the 
power,  it  would  no  doubt  compel  me 
either  to  sell  my  cottage  or  to  buy  iron 
rlailings.  If  no  one  drank  any  beer,  if  all 
were  self-respecting,  if  all  wore  badges 
with  a  "world  and  an  arrow,"  if  everyone 
went  to  Chapel,  then  would  they  force 
me  to  mend  my  railings  with  iron  nails 
and  barbed  wire.  If  George  V  were  not 
king,  if  the  people  ruled,  if  these  lovers 
of  iron  raihngs  and  brick  walls  had  the 
power,  there  would  be  no  life  for  me  or 
any  lover  of  string  upon  the  earth.  I 
wonder  whether  if  in  America  a  disciple 
of  the  god  Pan  is  allowed  to  mend  his 
garden  raihngs  with  string,  or  is  he 
badgered  to  use  nails?  -  One  day  it 
will  happen  that  everyone  will  be  forced 
to  hve  exactly  as  his  dullest  neighbour 
wishes  him  to,  and  we  shall  be  com- 
pelled to  eat  meat  every  day  and  to 
earn  the  money  to  pay  for  it.  An  iron- 
hearted  world  it  is  indeed,  and  in  some 


1 6         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

places  even  the  daisies  are  made  of 
nail  heads,  so  new  that  they  shine 
quite  hke  real  daisies.  I  pray  that  I 
may  always  be  allowed  to  keep  my 
blood  cool  by  watching  the  cows  and 
by  moving  brown  earth  under  the  sun. 
Must  everyone  here  on  earth  be  either 
ordering  or  obeying,  stealing  or  giving, 
blessing  or  cursing. ^^ 

The  kind  of  people  that  I  find  most 
unpleasant  to  my  taste,  are  the  people 
that  look  and  smile  and  walk  on.  These 
are  they  that  find  fault,  —  the  fault- 
finders, the  people  that  point  at  your 
thistles  and  count  your  nettles,  that 
wonder  why  you  do  not  keep  fowls, 
or  why  you  keep  a  row  of  five  broken 
buckets  by  your  back  door.  These 
are  the  people  who  think  that  to  work 
is  to  worship,  and  who  talk  about  nothing 
else  than  what  they  can  do,  and  what 
you  cannot  do.  I  lack  their  ardour; 
they  say  they  keep  the  world  growing, 
but  it  is  more  likely  that  they  keep  the 
world  sinning. 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit  17 

It  is  now  spring,  witli  a  dull  mist  and 
rain  coming  over  the  hills,  and  a  wind 
that  howls  like  December  in  the  chim- 
ney, and  in  the  spring  what  memories 
come  to  us  who  look  backward;  to  us 
who  prefer  not  to  look  forward.  The 
memories  of  spring,  —  that  every  spring 
revives,  and  every  autumn  kills,  and 
every  winter  buries!  I  know  the  joy  of 
looking  backward,  —  and  the  tears,  — 
in  order  to  find  again  the  sun  that  once 
shone;  and  when  found  I  can  take  and 
eat  the  true  joy  now  that  I  was  not  able 
to  take  then.  I  can  now  pick  up  the 
wind  flowers  that  I  missed  by  being  too 
eager  for  them.  Only  the  same  kind  of 
day  must  come  in  order  that  I  may  be 
able  to  remember  the  past,  and  I  must 
have  the  same  kind  of  feehngs  that  I 
had  on  that  same  day;  the  same  old 
crippled  man  must  hobble  past;  the 
same  wind  must  howl  in  the  chimney; 
the  same  white  cow  must  chew  the  cud 
by  my  gate;  and  then  I  remember. 
And    often    it   is    something   ugly    that 


1 8  The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

brings  me  to  this  happiness.  I  have 
never  had  the  least  objection  to  ugly 
things.  If  my  fire  warms  me,  what  do 
I  care  if  the  grate  is  a  square  black 
hole  in  the  wall,  with  three  varnished 
iron  sunflowers  in  a  row  above  it? 

I  like  things  beautiful  to  keep  at  a 
distance,  and  even  art  can  very  well 
keep  shut  up  in  a  book.  It  is  a  worry  to 
me  to  have  too  precious  works  near  by. 
I  can  look  at  good  things  too  much; 
it  is  better  to  have  a  certain  cheap- 
ness of  ordinary  and  common  things 
about,  that  one  need  never  look  at. 

No  labour  has  made  the  dehcate  vi- 
sions that  come  to  me  from  the  past, 
and  require  only  the  same  kind  of  day 
to  awaken;  no  hard  chisel  formed  the 
look  of  affection  that  I  saw  once  in  the 
eyes  of  a  sick  man;  no  brush  can  show 
me  the  first  celandine  lying  in  the  dust 
of  the  road,  thrown  down  by  a  tiny 
child,  though  a  brush  may  be  able  to 
show  me  one,  smihng  gaily,  almost  too 
gaily,  from  a  bank  of  canvas.     Ah,  but 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit  19 


to  him  that  painted  the  picture  these 
are  memories;  all  the  money  in  the 
world  cannot  buy  them. 

I  have  found  a  use  for  every  one  of 
the  moods  that  pass  through  me.  There 
is  one  of  depression  that  is  common  to 
all  men,  and  I  compel  this  mood  to 
carry  me  down  to  the  earth  and  even 
below  the  earth,  so  that  it  may  give  me 
peace.  When  I  speak  of  God,  I  mean 
the  mystic  fear  that  I  share  in  common 
with  all  men,  who  do  not  give  their 
lives  utterly  up  into  the  claws  of 
Mammon. 

When  I  began  to  write  this— shall  I 
say  tract.^^  — I  spoke  of  myself  as  a  priest 
without  a  God;  but  it  is  quite  impos- 
sible to  be  a  priest  at  all  without  the 
mystic  fear  showing  itself  somewhere, 
showing  itself  perhaps  in  the  way  I 
walk  down  the  road,  or  put  on  my 
,  overcoat,  shall  I  say.^  The  fear  of  God, 
calm,  persistent,  triumphant,  must  show 
itself  to  the  priest  at  last.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  ignore  it;  it  is  in  life,  it  has  to 


20         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

open  a  way  for  itself  although  we  may 
try  to  bar  it  out.  "I  went  down  into 
Hell  and  behold  he  was  there."  It  is 
futile  to  try  to  go  gaily  along  forever 
and  chat  and  smoke  cigarettes,  and 
talk  about  the  pleasure  of  the  spring, 
or  about  a  young  lady  who  hves  the 
other  side  of  the  valley  and  is  no  bet- 
ter than  she  should  be.  The  fear  of 
God  is  sure  to  break  in  upon  you;  the 
very  winds  bring  it;  it  comes  out  of 
the  stones;  I  dig  it  up  in  the  garden; 
I  hear  it  in  the  sound  of  a  train  far  off; 
there  is  fear  in  the  sound  of  a  train. 
I  see  it  moving  in  the  flight  of  a  bird; 
I  cannot  escape  it.  No  one  can  save 
himself  from  the  Fear  by  work;  you 
must  stop  somewhere,  and  the  Fear 
can  wait  for  you  outside  the  door, — 
he  has  plenty  of  time.  I  have  always 
lived  near  great  empty  spaces,  great 
empty  fields  and  huge  sohtary  downs; 
often  I  walk  miles  without  meeting 
anyone,  and  the  moods  that  come  to 
me  are  often  as  empty  and  void  as  the 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         21 

hills  around;  and  the  very  emptiness 
is  dreadful.  No  wonder  that  honest 
labourers  crowd  to  the  taverns;  no  won- 
der the  priest  Hkes  to  have  his  church 
full  of  human  flesh  and  blood  rather 
than  to  be  alone  with  the  fear  of  God. 

I  love  hght.  I  love  to  hght  the  lamp 
on  a  winter's  evening  when  the  sun  sets 
red  in  a  mist  behind  our  low  hills,  for 
in  the  summer  the  sun  climbs  up  our 
liighest  hill.  I  like  to  hght  a  fire,  and 
to  smell  the  smoke  of  burning  wood 
and  to  feel  the  first  warmth  that  comes 
when  the  sticks  burn.  I  love  the  sun; 
and  if  I  were  to  worship  an  Idol,  I 
would  certainly  worship  a  star;  and 
when  I  dig  in  the  garden  I  hke  to  turn 
my  face  to  the  sun.  For  the  moon  I 
have  no  love,  except  for  the  child  with 
torn  long  hair  that  runs  over  his  face 
when  he  is  full,  and  was  discovered  by 
one  of  my  brothers;  no  doubt  she  is 
always  fleeing  from  the  horrible  old 
man  with  the  sticks.  There  hved  just 
such  an  old  man  in  our  village. 


22         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

I  take  my  life  as  I  find  it,  and  live  it 
to  myself  as  everyone  does.  As  I  am  a 
priest,  I  never  give  anything  away;  it 
is  a  natural  law  of  my  nature  not  to 
give,  but  always  to  receive.  I  once 
asked  a  tramp  why  he  did  not  beg  of 
me  for  anything,  and  I  inquired  of  him 
whether  I  looked  a  mean  fellow,  or  if 
I  looked  as  if  I  had  not  anything  to 
give  away.  He  said  he  did  not  know 
why  he  had  not  asked,  but  that  some- 
how he  knew  that  I  was  not  the  kind 
of  gentleman  to  beg  from ;  he  also  added 
as  he  went  on,  "the  woman  behind  me 
will  ask  you,"  and  so  she  did,  but  got 
nothing. 

Looking  backward,  looking  forward, 
looking  around  me  in  search  of  my 
greatest  pleasure  next  to  mending  my 
railings,  I  can  say  without  lying  that 
I  find  it  in  reading  a  good  book.  I  do 
not  know  any  good  thing  that  is  so 
good  as  this.  But  I  must  have  a  book 
to  my  mind.  I  do  not  object  to  any 
kind  of  story,— to  travel,  to  pig-sticking 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit  23 

even;  but  it  must  be  something  with  a 
soul.  If  it  be  a  story,  let  it  have  a  touch 
of  human  blood  about  it;  what  I  want 
is  a  real  mind's  battle-ground,  with 
sweat  and  agony.  I  like  an  author 
who  has  seen — who  has  lived,  what  he 
is  writing  about;  I  hate  a  book  that 
tells  only  half  the  man  does  and  in- 
vents the  other  half:  I  like  the  whole 
man  in  his  work,  —  his  body,  his  hands 
and  his  eyes,  and  even  his  belly.  And 
I  hke  best  to  read  of  actual  moving, 
working  life;  of  ships  as  Conrad  writes 
of  them,  or  anything  else  that  has  a 
real  touch  of  moving,  itching,  speaking 
life  about  it.  Let  me  have  the  whole 
body  of  the  man  as  well  as  his  brain 
in  his  book. 

A  book  that  I  love,  and  of  all  books 
the  most  intensely  human,  is  Wesley's 
journal.  He  is  a  worshipful  priest  of 
his  hands,  as  Malory  would  have  said; 
he  speaks  with  tlie  fervour  of  God  and 
rides  with  the  fervour  of  the  Devil. 
There   are   no   cobwebs   about   his   ser- 


24         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

mons  even;  he  let  the  winds  of  heaven 
into  his  hfe,  the  sly  old  heathen!  He 
was  called,  I  suppose,  as  many  bad 
names  as  any  person  upon  earth  or  in 
heaven.  But  how  human  he  was;  how 
his  human  hatred  and  mahce  show  up 
the  man  as  a  man,  and  not  a  pitiful 
humbug  as  most  of  us  are;  and  he 
could  bring  down  his  fist  when  he 
wished  to.  He  was  a  bad  husband,  I 
know  it;  but  let  any  young  lady  with  a 
white  fur  muff  and  neat  ankles,  who 
wants  to  marry  a  John  —  more  John 
than  Wesley  —  find  out  a  Httle  what 
manner  of  man  he  is,  before  she  trips 
up  to  the  altar  beside  him;  and  if  she 
is  wise,  she  will  turn  back  and  find 
some  sober  bank-manager  instead,  whose 
name  may  very  well  be  something  else 
than  John.  John  Bunyan  would  have 
called  Wesley  a  cock  of  the  right  kind, 
but  a  wild  cock,  a  cock  that  strayed, 
a  cock  that  would  ride  without  a  wink 
sixty  miles  before  breakfast,  "with  a 
driving  rain  in  our  faces,"  rather  than 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         26 

listen  to  the  gentle  upbraidings  of  a 
sober  partner  at  home.  And  this  other 
John  who  is  the  true  saint  —  whereas 
Wesley  is  the  sinner  —  this  other  John 
had  ever  that  strange  quaint  love  of 
all  weak  things;  he  might  well  have 
been  a  Russian  peasant;  a  marvellously 
loving  man  he  must  have  been  and  very 
tender  too  to  all  about  him;  it  would 
have  been  a  helhsh  thing  to  have  cast 
stones  at  this  man's  behef.  The  thing 
was  life  and  death  to  him;  he  could  not 
defend  it  like  John  Wesley,  who  knew 
the  httle  hidden  ways  of  his  Lord. 

Everyone  treated  Bunyan  with  kind- 
ness, with  tolerance;  there  must  be 
some  good  in  man.  It  is  true  that  they 
put  informers  Hke  black  rooks  into  the 
trees,  but  they  did  not  run  mad  bulls 
at  his  meetings,  or  drag  his  preachers 
through  ponds.  I  expect  one  had  to  be 
a  brave  man  to  take  John  Wesley  into 
a  corner  and  tell  him  quietly  in  his 
ear  that  one  did  not  beheve  in  a  God. 
Some    of    the    young    gentlemen    who 


26  The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

broke   in   drunk   to   his   meetings   were 
sometimes  pretty  roughly  handled. 

Wesley's  humour  is  always  bubbhng 
over,  try  as  he  might  to  keep  it  down. 
And  how  he  loved  to  make  the  people 
fall  and  rave  at  his  meetings;  and  he 
went  about  afterwards  counting  them 
as  though  they  were  so  many  dead 
sheep.  I  would  have  walked  miles  to 
have  heard  him,  and,  by  heaven,  I 
would  have  tumbled  over,  too,  if  I  could 
have  done  it.  It  is  no  small  thing  to 
be  taken  out  of  this  care-worn,  weary, 
everyday  hfe,  and  behold  instead  a  vision 
of  yourself  as  a  damned  sinner  with  the 
fire  of  Hell  at  your  feet,  and  to  roar  out, 
feehng  that  the  very  devils  had  hold  of 
you.  And  after  all  this,  as  they  almost 
always  did,  to  receive  the  pardon;  to 
hear  the  voice  from  above;  and  to 
sleep  in  peace  with  the  Grace  of  God 
upon  your  pillows.  It  was  no  small 
thing  that  Wesley  could  fill  thousands  of 
death-beds  with  immortal  longings  and 
a  certainty  of  salvation;    if  they  were 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  llermil         ^7 

all  lies  and  cheating,  they  were  certainly 
romantic  lies  and  joyful  madness;  and 
if  death  can  be  cheated  of  its  sting, 
why,  then  let  us  cheat  it,  if  wc  can  I 
Wesley  could  give  hope  at  the  last, 
even  if  it  were  a  mad  hope;  and  who 
of  us  has  not  said  many  times,  "What 
can  I  do  to  be  saved?"  It  is  one  of 
the  most  curious  feehngs  that  I  know, 
this  one  of  being  on  the  side  of  God,  on 
the  safe  side.  Sometimes  in  my  life 
I  have  been  able  to  go  a  little  towards 
this  feehng,  and  to  know  what  it  is 
hke;  to  go  just  near  enough  to  the 
door  to  want  to  get  in,  and  to  be  made 
quite  ill-tempered  when  my  old  doubts 
drove  me  away. 

Another  book  that  sometimes  pleases 
me,  and  I  like  the  sober  colour  of  its 
binding,  is  the  Bible;  and  what  a  book 
of  blood  and  tears!  Think  of  all  the 
human  eyes  that  have  read  all  this 
very  ^  strange  matter ;  think  of  all  the 
human  hearts  that  have  read  terror 
and  hope  and  death  into  these  pages. 


28  The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

This  human  element  must  make  the 
book  at  least  of  interest  to  everyone. 
How  it  has  eaten  into  the  heart  of  man, 
how  it  has  torn  at  his  vitals  and  lashed 
him  with  his  blood.  How  it  utters  the 
moods  of  God  with  a  great  and  deep 
voice,  crying,  weeping,  hating,  and  end- 
ing up  in  utter  madness.  The  divine 
fear  flows  in  great  waves  through  its 
pages,  drowning  many  that  meet  it 
there,  and  even  a  child  sees  something 
terrible  about  this  book.  It  tells  of 
men  walking  in  dreams  in  the  garden 
of  God,  singing  and  praying  and  telhng 
Eastern  tales  under  the  moods  of  God; 
and  how  well  it  keeps  to  the  earth 
and  the  things  of  the  earth,  the  poetry 
of  the  belly  of  life.  We  can  see  the 
dark  men  wandering  under  the  sun  of 
the  desert,  walking  in  the  cool  of  the 
evening,  throwing  a  spear  and  shooting 
with  an  arrow.  It  shows  you  a  man 
breaking  a  hole  in  his  own  wall,  as  a 
sign  from  God; — what  a  mood  to  be  in! 
Another  eating  honey  out  of  the  bones 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         29 

of  a  lion;  and  at  the  end  man  comes 
to  Clirist,  the  human  child,  the  child  of 
the  moods  of  God;  and  then  the  Agony 
in  the  Garden. 

We  all  read  our  own  hfe  in  this  book, 
our  beginning  and  our  end.  The  world 
is  a  garden  to  us  all  at  first,  and  thorns 
and  nettles  come  only  too  quickly ;  but  we 
may  find  a  good  poet  among  the  nettles, 
and  perhaps  a  Ruth.  Or  it  may  be  our 
destiny  under  some  mood  or  other  to 
marry  a  harlot,  and  when,  as  no  doubt 
the  Prophet  did,  we  make  her  an  honest 
woman,  she  will  have  plenty  of  time  to 
preach  to  us  of  our  own  failings. 

It  was  not  easy  for  man  to  bear  the 
heavy  weight  of  the  moods  without 
Christ,  and  He  is  welcomed  by  all  the 
weak  ones  in  the  earth,  and  not  w^ithout 
cause,  for  the  end  must  be  the  agony 
in  the  garden  that  only  very  old  sin- 
ners seem  to  escape.  And  how  can  the 
play  be  acted  without  the  last  scene? 
It  cannot  be  complete  without  the  end. 
If  man   had   been   able   to   sneak   into 


3o         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

another  life  the  Bible  would  never  have 
been  needed.  The  moods  of  Him  above 
are  too  great  and  terrible  to  carry  the 
soul  of  man  with  them,  when  they  pass 
the  dark  waters.  It  is  well  that  our 
end  should  be  perfect  and  utter,  and  we 
know  it  is  well.  We  poor  mortals,  —  at 
least  the  weak  ones  amongst  us,  the 
others  don't  care,  —  we  poor  mortals 
play  with  the  romance  of  another  life 
as  a  babe  would  with  a  celluloid  toy, 
and  when  the  fire  touches  it,  in  a  mo- 
ment it  is  gone. 

Everything  that  we  do  and  think 
under  the  moods  is  put  into  the  Bible; 
the  Bible  tells  us  all  we  can  ever  know 
about  ourselves.  In  our  lives  the  Proph- 
ets sing  wild  songs;  Ruth  Hes  down  by 
Boaz;  David  steals  the  cakes;  Mary 
washes  Christ's  feet  with  her  hair; 
and  Samuel  hews  Agag  to  pieces  before 
the  Lord.  All  the  cruelty,  all  the  ter- 
ror, all  the  poetry  of  the  Bible  is  acted 
in  our  lives;  that  is  why  it  is  the  reli- 
gious book  that  will  live;  it  is  true,  be- 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         3i 

cause  it  is  true  to  life  and  true  to  man. 
We  may  well  sorrow  over  the  sorrows 
of  our  Lord,  for  one  day  the  nails  will 
be  driven  into  our  own  hands.  A  httle 
pain  that  we  feel  in  our  bodies  may  be 
the  beginning  of  a  fatal  disease;  a 
thought  that  anchors  in  our  minds  may 
be  the  prelude  to  a  fierce  madness. 
We  pass  our  days  as  gaily  as  we  can, 
but  the  Bible  is  always  near,  and  try 
how  we  may  to  escape,  God  will  win. 
The  book  of  our  tragedy  is  in  our  doors, 
open  it  and  know  what  we  are  and  how 
we  shall  end. 

And  our  best  books  follow  the  same 
plan,  and  try  to  show  the  same  sad 
story  with  a  gay  laugh.  Shakespeare 
plays  in  the  field  of  our  folhes  with  a 
light  hand,  and  Hke  the  Bible  he  would 
show  us  our  heart's  blood  held  up  by  a 
gay  fool  in  cap  and  bells;  only  in 
Shakespeare,  there  is  a  great  deal  more 
of  the  love  of  the  Devil  than  of  the 
fear  of  God.  Shakespeare  took  away  the 
clouds  of  God  and  put  the  sunshine  of 


32         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

his  own  head  and  pointed  becird  in  their 
place.  As  a  matter  of  fact  all  books 
tell  the  same  tale,  and  advise  men  to 
look  into  all  kinds  of  holes  and  corners 
for  honey  to  make  their  hves  sweet. 

If  ever  I  wrote  a  book  I  would  hke 
to  show  that  the  continued  touch  of 
life  gives  us  a  joy  that  we  may  well  try 
to  understand,  and  in  books  this  touch 
of  hfe  is  what  pleases  me  most.  There 
is  something  in  the  spirit  of  these  mod- 
ern days  that  makes  me  feel  that  I  am 
wasting  time  when  I  am  reading,  and 
that  "something"  must  be  the  iron-eyed, 
restless,  nail-making  devil  that  tries  to 
put  petrol  into  every  man's  belly,  and 
would  turn  the  world  into  a  scurvy 
heap  of  scurrying  ants,  all  running 
every  way  inside  large  white  eggs  that 
move  themselves,  a  great  many  times 
bigger  than  the  little  ants.  And  even 
I  that  hve  in  the  wilderness,  sitting 
in  my  own  hut  between  the  hills  that 
are  now  covered  with  yellow  gorse 
flowers,  —  even  I,  with  brown  bread  and 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         33 

tea  upon  the  table,  and  my  feet  to  the 
fire,  —  even  I,  sitting  thus  in  the  desert, 
feel  the  devil  tugging  at  my  coat  and 
shouting  in  my  ear  that  I  ought  to  be 
doing  something  in  order  to  help  the 
nail-makers  to  iron  over  the  whole 
world.  It  is  terrible  to  think  that  the 
evil  smell  of  modern  oil  has  got  to  me, 
and  that  the  vile  working  devils  would 
even  try  to  pump  petrol  into  my  soul. 
In  heaven's  name  let  those  that  make 
work  into  a  god  with  a  Brummagem 
name,  take  him  out  of  my  way;  I  do 
not  like  that  kind  of  god. 

Do  not  think,  0  reader,  that  I  mean 
to  revile  the  kind  of  work  that  I  see 
pass  my  garden.  I  see  an  old  cart 
trundling  along  filled  with  turnips,  going 
about  a  mile  an  hour;  I  see  a  rabbit- 
catcher  half  hidden  in  a  rabbit  hole, 
quietly  wondering  where  to  set  his  next 
snare,  and  turning  at  last  his  slow  steps 
to  the  inn  to  exchange  a  rabbit  for 
beer.  No,  it  is  the  work  that  bites  you 
that  I  iiate,  —  work  with  a  foreman  biting 


3^^         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

behind;  not  the  work  of  a  ploughboy 
who  has  plenty  of  time  to  think  of  his 
dinner  and  to  sing  a  song;  but  the 
work  that  has  no  song  in  it  at  all,  the 
work  that  is  sheer,  bare,  vile  toil. 

And  let  us  all  bless  rehgion,  for  it 
can,  like  a  pleasant  timely  illness,  take 
men  away  from  their  cursed  everlasting 
toil.  Where  work  is  the  most,  rehgion  is 
the  least  thing  in  the  land.  And  re- 
hgion, so  the  task-masters  say,  might 
very  well  do  more  harm  than  the 
drink,  if  it  takes  the  line  of  least  resist- 
ance. In  their  heart  of  hearts  the  task- 
masters fear  the  priest;  that  is  why  they 
try  so  hard  and  succeed  so  well  in  mak- 
ing a  false  priest;  they  do  not  mind 
the  Lord  God,  but  they  do  not  Hke  the 
Son  of  Man.  I  wonder  if  we  shall  ever 
understand  that  the  world  is  not  made 
for  work  but  for  Joy.  And  I  who  am 
trying  to  understand,  why  should  not  I 
be  left  in  peace  to  eat  and  walk  amongst 
the  clean  rain-swept  hills  and  to  try  to 
get  under  the  moods  of  God. 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermll         35 

Come  and  take  and  eat  this  morning 
with  me,  a  bowl  of  porridge  with  salt, 
bread  crisped  by  the  fire,  tea,  the  vir- 
gin herb  of  the  sun,  and  brown  sugar, 
the  sweetness  of  our  Mother's  breast. 
Shall  we  go  out  and  slay  a  lamb  of  the 
flock  if  we  have  a  mind  to  a  feast?  Why 
should  we  not  cut  a  throat  or  stick  a 
pig,  and  cook  it  over  a  great  fire?  But 
I  prefer  parched  corn;  I  prefer  to  grow 
some  genial  honest  sea-cabbage  in  my 
garden,  or  to  transform  some  ugly  worn 
bits  of  copper  into  shining  white  eggs. 
It  is  well  to  leave  too  many  dinners 
alone,  and  too  big  feasts;  for  if  we  eat 
a  great  many  very  large  dinners,  the 
dinners  will  most  Hkely  end  by  eating 
us. 

All  praise  be  to  Wine,  but  should  not 
wine  be  kept  for  those  selected  moments 
when  we  meet  the  ones  that  we  love, 
the  children  of  our  hearts.^  I  do  not 
like  always  to  see  wine  on  the  table;  it 
is  often  stale,  and  the  decanter  not 
overfull;   and  there  are  often  dregs  that 


36         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

the  unwary  guest  has  to  finish;  and 
worst  of  all  the  host  wonders  if  there 
will  be  just  enough.  Throw  such  dregs 
to  the  pigs.  When  I  take  wine  I  hke 
bottles,  or  better  still  a  goodly  hooped 
barrel  in  the  cellar  and  the  wine  drawn 
in  fantastic  jugs.  I  like  there  to  be 
around  the  table  three  or  four  com- 
panions, but  no  more  than  the  number 
of  the  bottles,  and  no  women.  And 
there  ought  to  be  a  ritual,  a  crowning 
of  the  cups;  cups  of  silver  and  gold; 
a  feast  of  wine  is  quite  worth  the 
trouble  of  reading  the  writing  upon  the 
wall. 

Sometimes,  but  alas  only  too  seldom, 
comes  to  me  out  of  the  heavenly  pres- 
ence the  mood  of  loving  Tolerance,  that 
most  gentle  of  the  moods  of  God.  It 
is  then  that  I  regard  the  world  as  a 
garden  and  the  people  as  good  children; 
it  is  the  mood  in  which  everyone  is  for- 
given; it  is  the  mood  that  makes  me 
say  to  myself,  "It  is  good  for  me  to  be 
here,"  and  to  say  to  other  people,  "It 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         87 

is  good  for  you  to  be  near  me."  It  is 
a  mood  that  would  pick  out  of  every 
man's  life  pearls,  and  see  joy  in  every 
hardsliip.  It  is  a  mood  that  whispers 
joy  to  the  sick  man  and  tells  him  of 
the  wonderful  stillness  of  death.  This 
mood  is  full  of  summer  blessedness,  of 
cool  places  amidst  great  and  fair  trees; 
of  rich  banks  of  summer  flowers;  of 
the  noon-tide  when  the  labourer  lays 
him  down  to  rest.  Under  this  blessed 
mood  the  winds  of  heaven  are  still, 
and  the  mind  of  man  is  filled  with 
peace,  that  is  truly  and  really  the  Peace 
of  God.  Alas,  this  mood  stays  with  me 
but  a  short  time. 

I  want  to  manage  myself  as  well  as 
I  can,  but  it  is  not  easy  to  manage  my- 
self when  I  am  tired;  when  I  am  tired 
I  can  do  nothing  else  but  walk  up  and 
down.  At  those  times  I  am  a  great 
trouble,  a  great  worry  to  myself;  I  *do 
not  obey  the  rules  that  I  have  .set  up  to 
guide  me;  I  do  not  even  obey  myself. 
If  I  say,  "  Go  out  for  a  walk  in  the  rain," 


38         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

I  do  not  go.  If  I  order  myself  to  write 
letters,  I  do  not  write  them.  It  is  no 
good.  This  kind  of  "being  tired"  is  a 
mood  of  despair,  and  when  despair  gets 
hold  of  you  there  is  no  escape  till  the 
ugly  thing  lets  go. 

Perhaps  it  is  possible  for  some  to  get 
good  even  out  of  this  mood,  for  God 
hides  His  gold  in  queer  places;  despair 
may  be  a  kind  of  winter  in  the  summer 
of  your  day.  The  sap  has  sunk  hke 
lead  into  your  heels  and  you  feel  as 
though  you  could  howl  like  a  winter's 
wolf.  This  hopeless  despair,  by  bringing 
you  to  the  earth,  raises  you  again;  it 
changes  your  blood,  and  drives  you 
with  vicious  kicks  behind  into  a  new 
pasture.  It  makes  a  way  for  you  out 
of  your  own  misery,  and  creates  a  new 
mind  out  of  your  unrest:  that,  —  with  a 
new  beginning.  But  I  can  never  escape, 
I  can  only  wait  until  the  mood  lets  go, 
and  meanwhile  the  teeth  of  the  mood 
bite  me  to  the  bone,  and  the  black 
cruelty   cuts   at   the  very  roots   of  my 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         3q 

being;  and  when  it  has  hold  of  me  I 
can  do  nothing;  I  cannot  even  read 
"The  City  of  Dreadful  Night."  When 
I  am  hke  that  I  know  there  is  nothing 
to  be  done,  —  nothing.  When  I  am  like 
that  I  feel  as  if  mind  and  body  are 
hemmed  in  by  black  darkness,  and 
that  if  I  move  I  shall  touch  the  jagged 
edges  of  a  rusty  knife,  held  in  the  claws 
of  an  ugly  round-headed  demon;  and 
so  I  wait  and  hope  that  this  mood  of 
God  will  not  last  long. 

When  we  were  all  of  us  quite  natural 
beasts  of  the  earth,  we  were  able  to 
take  and  enjoy  the  life  near  to  us;  but 
being  grown  into  men,  we  have  got  into 
the  bad  habit  of  looking  forward,  and 
by  looking  forward  we  quite  lose  the 
present.  I  want  to  take  every  moment 
as  a  fact  in  itself  of  special  interest, 
and  as  a  moment  that  belongs  to  me. 
Every  moment  that  I  have  to  spend 
does  belong  to  me,  and  the  moments 
may  be  gold  or  dross  as  I  choose  to  make 
them.    Why  should  I  let  a  moment  pass 


[xo         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

me  without  taking  it  and  finding  a 
fairy  food  for  my  thought?  I  Hke  to 
have  a  plan  to  fit  the  kind  of  day  that 
I  expect  to  come;  I  Hke  to  know  a 
Httle  how  I  want  to  treat  the  day,  be- 
fore I  find  out  how  the  day  will  treat 
me.  So  that  if  I  am  bitten  by  one  hour, 
I  have  got  a  muzzle  ready  for  the  next. 
And  I  like  to  remind  myself  very  often 
that  the  day  ends  in  sleep,  and  that 
sleep  is  a  passing  good  thing  for  a  man. 
To  me  by  no  means  seldom  comes  the 
thought  (that  is,  in  truth,  only  the  push 
of  the  old  animal  behind),  that  the  day 
is  wasted,  —  I  have  done  nothing;  and  a 
good  thing  too  if  I  have  done  nothing,  — 
the  most  pleasant  and  the  most  useful 
way  that  anyone  can  spend  a  day  is  to 
do  nothing. 

May  my  pride  help  me,  poor  foohsh 
mortal  that  I  am,  with  my  insane  de- 
sire to  do  things!  Has  not  all  this 
same  sad  day  the  breath  of  life  passed 
into  my  lungs,  —  is  it  then  nothing  to 
breathe.'^    And  I  have  eaten  and  touched 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         4i 

the  fruits  of  the  earth.  How  do  I 
know  that  some  God  may  not  have 
rested  beside  me  during  my  idleness,  and 
His  breath  may  have  mingled  with 
my  breath,  and  His  thought  with  my 
thought?  How  can  I  tell  that  even  in 
this  sad  day  of  nothing  done,  a  wave  of 
thought,  beginning  in  a  tiny  ripple,  may 
not  have  been  conceived  in  me?  And,  be- 
sides, what  man,  what  king,  what  priest 
can  do  anything  more  than  live?  It 
has  taken  long  enough  to  make  a  man, 
and  now  a  man  sits  in  disgrace  and 
hates  himself  because  in  one  day  he  has 
done  nothing.  What  after  all  are  the 
very  wonderful  doings  of  man  worth? 
Very  hkely  by  doing  nothing  we  may 
be  going  a  httle  way  on  the  right  road, 
and  by  doing  a  great  deal  we  may  only 
be  going  round  the  same  old  way 
again,  the  same  old  way  that  leads  to 
common  ugly  rows  of  houses,  munici- 
pal buildings,  and  petrol-filled  machines. 
I,  too,  for  a  long  while,  have  looked 
round   this  corner   and   that  corner  for 


42  The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

God's  secret,  and  at  last  I  have  dis- 
covered that  I  can  do  very  well  if  I 
loiter  through  my  Ufe  without  knowing 
any  secret  at  all;  and  who  can  say 
that  there  is  any  secret  to  know?  It  is 
quite  clear,  and  quite  proven,  that  men 
breathe  when  they  are  born  and  not 
when  they  die;  and  there  are  other 
matters  quite  as  clear  to  me.  It  is  my 
wish  to  be  an  intelligent  creature  that 
has  no  desire  to  get  more  than  just  the 
plain  grass  and  sun  that  are  quite  easy 
to  get,  and  to  wrap  myself  up  in  winter 
in  a  woollen  blanket.  The  excitement 
of  going  out  to  pick  up  a  few  sticks  is 
all  the  hunting  that  I  want;  and  all 
the  gallantry  that  I  want  is  sometimes 
to  see  in  summer  a  little  piece  of  pink 
or  white  on  the  side  of  a  liill  a  mile  or 
two  away.  I  am  easy  to  please  and  I 
never  want  to  do  anytliing  that  hurts 
anyone;  —  why  should  I?  I  should  not 
like  to  see  the  blood  of  my  neighbour  if 
I  dug  at  him  with  a  knife.  And  why 
should  I  want  to  hurt  anyone  when  I 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Ilermil         43 

can  enjoy  reading  "Tristram  Shandy." 
The  uttermost  I  can  do  is  to  try  my 
best  to  hate.  But  I  do  not  Hke  to  hate 
anyone  that  is  too  near;  there  ought  to 
be  a  good  wide  space  between  a  man 
and  his  neighbour. 

It  is  my  business  to  find  out  what  I 
value  in  the  world,  and  by  no  means 
to  pay  my  regard  to  what  other  people 
value.  Christian  —  Bunyan's  pilgrim  — 
all  of  a  sudden,  while  he  was  walking  in 
the  fields,  became  aware  that  he  was  of 
value;  and  it  was  then  that  he  became 
for  the  first  tune  in  his  life  a  really 
proud  man,  and  a  man  who  could  walk 
his  own  way  whatever  Church  and 
State  and  family  chose  to  say  to  liim. 
I  only  require  to  beheve  in  myself,  and 
then  everytliing  that  I  do  will  be  well 
done.  No  two  people  look  even  at  the 
same  daisies  in  the  same  way,  and  my 
way  is  the  best  way  for  me.  I  have 
the  moments  of  my  fife  to  spend,  I 
have  myself,  what  more  can  I  want? 

In  the  old  days  I  used  to  tie  myself 


^4         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

up  in  a  mystic  knot,  that  I  never  could 
undo;  neither  could  I  ever  explain  what 
it  meant.  Now  I  leave  all  mystery  to 
come  and  go  with  the  moods.  If  a 
mood  comes  and  therein  is  hidden  a  vi- 
sion, I  welcome  it  and  believe;  for  there 
is  a  mood  in  which  God  even  believes 
in  Himself,  and  in  that  mood  He  begets 
the  belief  of  the  world.  And  I  am  will- 
ing to  beheve,  too,  when  it  comes  to  me. 
I  take  and  eat  of  the  mystic  fruit;  only 
when  the  fruit  is  taken  away  I  do  not 
pretend  that  I  have  it  still.  How  often 
has  my  body  been  the  home  of  carking 
care,  and  vile,  dire  forebodings,  or  silly 
ignorance,  or  turbid  folly  .^^  And  I  have 
had  to  hve  a  long  time  before  I  was 
able  to  open  my  eyes  and  see  myself. 

To  have  the  soul  and  teeth  of  a  hon 
and  the  body  of  a  tramp,  is  the  way  to 
tread  on  this  world  as  it  ought  to  be 
trodden  on.  I  know  that  I  am  an 
enemy  to  the  people  of  the  world  as 
they  are.  I  do  not  like  the  way  they 
look  at  me.    Why  is  it  that  when  I  am 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         /i5 


doing  my  work,  the  people  of  the  world 
look  at  me  as  though  I  were  doing 
something  wrong?  "There  he  is  again, 
digging  in  his  garden." 

I  suppose  that  I  am  the  kind  of  per- 
son that  whatever  I  do  is  a  criminal 
offence.  I  must  not  even  water  my 
flowers,  or  walk  down  the  road,  or  tlirow 
a  stone  at  a  rat,  or  read  the  paper  in  a 
corner  under  a  little  bush  of  May. 
No  one  ever  likes  to  be  understood; 
perhaps  that  is  why  there  is  a  jeering 
twinkle  in  the  eyes  of  those  that  look 
at  me  as  I  cut  my  grass.  Perhaps  the 
people  think  that  I  understand  them. 
If  they  do  tliink  so,  they  are  certainly 
to  be  excused  for  the  way  they  look 
at  me,  but  they  are  wrong.  I  do  not 
pretend  to  understand  them,  for  to 
understand  the  people  would  be  to 
understand  God,  at  least  to  understand 
what  God  ought  never  to  be. 

To  give  too  good  heed  to  God's 
moods  often  gets  a  man  shut  up  inside 
prison  walls.     That  is  why  it  is  well  to 


46         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

understand  one's  own  mind,  so  that 
when  we  find  a  mood  pulls  us  along  a 
road  to  destruction,  we  can  hold  back 
a  little  before  it  is  too  late.  I  have 
never  found  that  God  plays  at  his 
moods.  If  He  does  jest  at  all,  it  is  a 
very  monstrous  jest,  and  the  sort  of 
jest  that  does  not  appeal  to  me  per- 
sonally, though  I  like  to  read  about  it 
in  the  papers. 

I  very  much  dishke  people  who  are 
always  the  same;  for  no  man  can  be 
always  the  same  unless  he  is  so  much 
of  an  animal  that  the  moods  pass  over 
him  like  the  clouds. 

I  notice  in  this  tract  that  I  am  now 
writing,  that  sometimes  I  appear  to  be 
an  infidel  and  sometimes  a  befiever, 
sometimes  a  Cliristian  and  sometimes  a 
heathen,  and  every  brave  man  is  just 
the  same  as  I  am;  for  no  one  but  a 
coward  hides  his  head  in  the  sand  when 
the  mood  that  he  is  afraid  to  see  goes 
by.  If  a  man  is  sincere  he  will  change 
his  opinion  with  every  mood,  at  least 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         ^7 

about  the  tilings  that  belong  to  the 
spirit.  I  do  not  change  my  ideas  in 
some  things,  because  God  is  a  spirit, 
and  though  in  the  earth  we  have  the 
Son  of  God  to  live  with,  God  himself 
keeps  always  in  the  spirit  of  His  moods. 
I  change  my  mind  most  in  what  I  be- 
lieve; but  as  a  rule  I  do  the  same 
thing.  I  am  always  polite  to  the 
world,  and  I  try  not  to  tell  anyone 
when  God's  moods  break  in  upon  me; 
or  when  a  tongue  of  fire  suddenly  de- 
vours all  the  thought  that  I  love  best; 
this  is  what  I  expect  to  happen. 

But  it  is  a  Uttle  hard  when  God's 
moods  shatter  my  belief  in  Him,  though 
no  mood  of  God  can  take  away  the 
love  of  Christ;  for  that  kind  of  love 
that  Christ  first  planted  is  the  only 
flower  that  can  live  under  all  the 
moods;  and  so  it  is  possible,  nay  de- 
sirable, for  the  greatest  infidel  upon 
earth  to  love  Christ;  for  in  some  curi- 
ous way  the  Son  of  Man  is  in  Earth 
and  in  Heaven,  though  this  double  life 


/i8         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

is  rather  obscure.  However,  His  love 
has  been  felt  by  men  even  under  the 
Garment  of  God,  and  in  the  darkest 
terrors  of  His  moods;  and  also  I  have 
felt  it  while  I  have  been  quite  quietly 
picking  buttercups  with  my  two  Kttle 
boys  in  the  fields. 

All  priests  ought  to  be  trained  as  un- 
behevers,  for  unbelief  is  the  only  good 
soil  for  the  believing  mood  to  grow  in; 
so  long  as  unbeHef  is  not  fixed  to  that 
foohsh  idea  that  we  are  all  so  proud  of, 
the  idea,  I  mean,  that  we  know  the 
Truth.  How,  I  should  hke  to  know, 
can  I  know  the  Truth  when  God  Him- 
self is  always  contradicting  it?  If  I  say 
anything  is  true,  then  a  mood  comes 
and  casts  the  thing  called  Truth  to  the 
winds,  and  my  idea  of  God  goes  with 
it.  If  I  say  I  believe  only  in  matter, 
I  have  to  be  always  proving  it  to  my- 
self in  order  to  keep  out  the  belief  in 
God. 

That  is  why  so  many  people  are  argu- 
ing   whether    one    behef   or    another   is 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Ilermil         /jq 

true;  because  each  knows  that  if  he 
does  not  keep  it  up,  his  side  of  the 
question  will  shp  tlirough  his  fingers. 
And  a  man  is  most  unhappy  when  he 
has  always  to  be  fighting  the  mood  of 
belief  or  unbelief,  in  order  to  keep  the 
one  or  the  other  simply  because  he 
happens  to  think  that  one  or  other  of 
the  ideas  belongs  to  him;  it  doesn't. 
Like  all  other  ideas,  it  belongs  to 
God.  It  is  just  man's  conceit.  He 
stands  hke  a  cock  upon  a  dunghill  and 
crows  out  his  belief;  or  else  he  holds 
his  watch  in  his  hand  and  says,  "Let 
God  strike  me  dead,  if  he  is  a  God,  in 
ten  minutes."  And  perhaps  the  next 
day  this  very  man  believes  in  God,  for 
the  mood  of  behef  is  upon  him  before 
he  takes  out  his  watch  again  to  prove 
the  contrary,  and  then  he  has  to  do  all 
he  can  to  pretend  to  himself  that  he 
does  not  beheve. 

It  is  not  for  me  to  say  how  long  the 
different  moods  are  wont  to  stay;  every- 
one in  this  matter  must  judge  for  him- 


5o         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

self.  And  it  is  no  use  crying  out 
against  the  mood  that  hurts  you;  it  is 
better  to  go  and  dig  in  the  garden. 

I  can  see,  and  so  can  any  other  who 
can  think  for  himself,  how  good  a  thing 
it  is  that  God  hves  in  us  in  no  fixed 
mood.  If  He  did,  it  would  render  the 
Advent  of  Clu'ist  an  impossibihty.  And 
how  cruelly  Clirist  was  treated  by  the 
men  who  had  fixed  the  moods  by  their 
law  shows  that  if  man  could  keep  God 
out  of  his  life,  he  would  gladly  do  it; 
just  as  he  would  hke  to  keep  out  death, 
war,  plague,  earthquake,  love,  wisdom, 
pity,  or  any  other  state  that  hurts  his 
appetite,  and  prevents  him  from  gath- 
ering together  the  things  of  this  world, 
and  from  leaving  them  to  his  children. 

And  it  is  easy  to  see  how  man,  with 
his  instinctive  cunning,  caught  at  the 
fixed  behef  in  a  distant  God  as  some- 
thing tangible  that  would  get  this  near 
God  and  His  upsetting  moods  quite  out 
of  his  hfe.  Man  thought  —  fooHsh  fel- 
low —  that  if  he  always  held  on  to  the 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  IJermil         5i 

tail  of  the  bull,  it  would  not  gore  him, 
but  this  bull  has  not  got  a  tail. 

I  am  ashamed  at  the  way  we  eat  and 
drink  and  sleep  as  if  none  of  these 
tilings  concern  us  in  the  least.  We  take 
our  dinner  just  as  if  it  were  no  great 
matter,  when  every  sitting  down  to 
meat  should  be  a  feast  to  the  Lord. 
We  cast  our  bread  into  the  dust  to 
the  dogs,  when  we  ought  to  hand  it  to 
them  in  silver  dishes.  Everything  that 
we  eat  should  be  sacred  to  our  palates. 
I  like  to  make  a  wonder  out  of  every 
little  act,  because  every  little  act  is  a 
wonder. 

The  simple  life  —  so  called  —  is  not 
the  simple  hfe  at  all;  it  is  the  deeper 
life.  The  simple  life  is  the  life  of  motor 
cars,  of  divorces,  of  monkey  dances,  of 
hunting  cats  and  hares  and  foxes,  of 
shooting  people  and  playing  games  like 
ferrets.  All  these  things  are  the  natu- 
ral, the  simple  life  of  a  man.  Anyone 
can  get  pleasure  in  these  ways;  put  a 
man  on  a  horse,  and  a  fox  or  a  cat  be- 


52         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

fore  him  running  away,  and  the  man 
will  be  simple  and  happy.  And  the 
other  pleasm"es  are  just  as  simple. 

The  best  joy  is  not  got  quite  so  easily. 
I  want  to  cultivate  the  kind  of  mind 
that  can  turn  stones  into  bread,  a  dull 
hour  into  heavenly  glory,  and  a  dull 
life  into  the  life  of  a  king.  For  what 
we  call  dullness,  is  really  the  best  soil 
we  can  dig  in,  because  the  gold  that  it 
yields  is  very  precious  and  very  lasting. 
I  like  to  know  that  I  am  getting  rich, 
not  by  stealing  from  the  poor,  but  by 
getting  something  more  out  of  myself; 
I  want  to  get  all  I  can  out  of  myself, 
and  what  I  want  to  get,  is  the  tiling 
that  shall  please  me. 

The  fact  that  it  is  hard  to  get  any- 
thing out  of  oneself  drives  people  to  go 
and  get  what  they  can  out  of  others.  I 
do  not  blame  them.  I  never  blame  any- 
body; I  never  even  blame  myself.  The 
light  of  my  lamp  gives  hght  to  the 
moods  of  God  that  overshadow  me  as  I 
write;  the  air  surrounds  the  moods  when 


The  SoKlofiny  of  a  Tfermif  53 

it  surrounds  inc;  and  the  moods  rest 
in  me  when  I  sleep.  I  try  to  deepen, 
to  broaden,  to  open  my  Ufe  in  every 
way;  to  stand  no  more  wondering  how 
to  be  happy,  but  to  see  and  feel  and 
touch.  I  Hke  to  touch  the  waves  of 
the  sea  and  the  mould  in  my  garden; 
I  like  to  touch  the  heart  of  man;  I  like 
to  touch  the  grass  and  moss  of  the 
fields. 

It  is  only  when  I  meet  men  that  I 
am  ashamed,  and  it  is  when  I  am 
ashamed  that  my  love  bites  me,  and  I 
feel  pain  as  though  I  had  been  bitten 
by  an  adder.  Sometimes  when  I  walk 
along  the  street  of  our  little  town  and 
men  pass  me,  and  I  see  them  talking 
to  each  other,  I  feel  ashamed.  There  is 
something  very  ugly  about  the  immor- 
tal part  of  a  man,  —  his  greed,  his  getting 
on,  his  self-sacrifice,  his  giving  to  the 
poor.  I  suppose  there  can  be  nothing 
beautiful  in  anything  that  has  gone  on 
a  long  while  without  changing;  it  is 
only  the  ugly  part  of  us  that  can  live 


54         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

tlirough  so  many  generations  of  flesh 
and  blood.  I  long  for  man  to  repent 
and  to  be  saved  from  his  immortality, 
so  that  I  may  not  feel  ashamed  when 
I  get  into  the  road  to  let  him  pass  on 
the  pavement. 

At  last,  thank  goodness,  I  have  not 
the  slightest  value  for  my  own  opinion 
or  for  anything  that  I  may  say,  or 
think,  or  write.  I  now  take  it  for 
granted  that  I  am  nearly  always  as  far 
from  the  Truth  as  Mr.  Gladstone  was, 
and  I  do  not  care  if  I  am.  I  am  not 
here  to  do  right  or  wrong,  or  to  teach 
anyone;  I  am  here  to  live.  And  at 
last  I  have  found  out  where  the  pleas- 
ure of  hving  hides;  I  know  now  the 
moments  that  I  have  most  enjoyed, 
and  these  moments  may  come  again; 
there  is  not  one  that  may  not  come 
again,  even  in  old  age. 

Youth  is  silly  and  selfish;  it  is  often 
miserable  and  foohsh;  its  good  looks 
are  stuffed  with  foohsh  feelings  that  are 
often  as  old  as  the  world;   and  its  mind 


T}ie  SoUloquy  of  a  Hermit         55 

is  narrow,  —  it  is  always  thinking  a 
thousand  things  too  many  about  itself, 
when  one  thing  would  do.  Youth  has 
too  many  irons  in  the  fire  to  be  able 
really  to  live.  It  is  best  to  have  before 
you  only  two  roads,  This  or  That,  this 
life  as  it  is,  or  nothingness. 

I  will  try  to  remember  a  few  of  the 
fairy  hours  that  I  have  enjoyed  most. 
I  remember  one  evening  in  late  autumn, 
that  I  walked  with  two  very  dear  com- 
panions into  the  shining  lights  of  a 
town,  out  of  the  dark  country  lanes. 
The  first  lamp  that  we  passed  might 
have  been  an  immortal  star.  The  first 
street,  the  first  moving  creature,  an  old 
woman  carrying  a  bundle  of  gloves  in  a 
black  cloth  bag,  —  no  sinner  entering 
heaven  could  have  had  so  much  joy. 
The  streets  grew  broader  and  the  lamps 
brighter  and  the  passers-by  more  gay, 
and  the  whole  town  was  a  fairy  palace 
made  for  our  delight,  and  we  had  only 
to  walk  about  to  enjoy  it. 

And   I  remember  under  a  white  cliff, 


56         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

where  the  sand  was  too  hot  to  touch 
and  the  sun's  kiss  kissed  deep  into  my 
soul.  With  a  dear  friend  I  partook  of 
a  httle  bread  and  a  tiny  hard  piece  of 
cheese  and  a  Httle  bottle  of  Kme-juice, 
and  we  parted  it  between  us,  and 
broke  the  bread  with  a  priest's  hands, 
and  ate  and  drank  as  though  we  shared 
only  one  child's  heart  between  us;  and 
afterwards  we  each  smoked  a  cigarette 
that  tasted  of  cool  woods. 

And  one  other  walk,  that  I  hope  in 
my  last  hour  to  remember;  it  was  in  a 
cold  February,  and  we  walked  far  over 
the  downs,  over  the  white  dead  grass, 
dry  and  crisp  in  the  wind;  and  we 
rested  a  little  and  ate  in  a  place  where 
a  little  mound  rose  above  the  hill. 
And  we  watched,  in  the  valley  beneath 
us,  tiny  children  running  to  school 
beside  a  little  blue  trickle  of  water, 
and  large  gulls  were  washing  and  flap- 
ping their  wings  in  the  water.  The 
children  called  to  them  and  waved  their 
arms,    and   the   gulls   rose    and   spread 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         67 

like  snowflakes  over  the  valley,  and  the 
children  ran  on,  holding  each  other's 
hands  and  singing. 

The  cup  I  wish  to  drink  is  the  cup  of 
the  earth's  blood.  I  wish  to  drink 
deep  of  the  silence,  the  deep  mists,  the 
growing  corn,  and  the  movements  of 
birds.  The  very  life  that  I  feel  around 
me  should  drug  me,  and  each  motion 
and  movement  and  tongue  of  fire  that 
I  feel  ought  to  pass  Hke  rich  wine  into 
my  being.  The  very  stones  of  the  road 
should  yield  up  to  me  their  thoughts. 
And  no  doubt  that  was  what  Christ 
meant,  when  He  spoke  about  the  stones 
becoming  men.  To  force  upon  our 
wonderful  bodies  the  drunkenness  of 
prepared  wine,  is  to  sour  the  imagina- 
tion and  to  prevent  us  from  ever  getting 
the  dehcious  joy  of  real  drunkenness. 

I  try  to  be  at  peace  with  all  my 
thoughts  and  to  welcome  even  my  anger 
when  it  breaks  out  upon  me.  I  watch 
myself  as  if  I  were  far  away,  as  if  I 
were  a  cloud  passing  in  the  sky,  or  a 


58         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

distant  sheep  feeding  upon  the  hill-side. 
I  have  yet  to  change  a  great  deal  be- 
fore I  can  reach  the  goal  of  happiness. 
I  still  feel  that  I  am  in  part  immortal. 
I  still  find  a  curious  pleasure  in  possess- 
ing a  handful  of  bright  gold  coins.  I 
still  desire  cunningly  to  defraud.  And 
often,  however  much  I  disbelieve  in  my 
opinion,  I  think  I  am  right.  And  feel- 
ing as  I  do  the  very  movements  of 
God,  I  do  not  like  to  be  treated  as  a 
poor  man  who  cannot  afford  a  day 
labourer  to  dig  his  garden. 

I  suppose  my  class,  the  priest  class, 
craves  for  love  more  than  any  other 
kind  of  human,  as  it  feels  itself  sinking 
into  extinction.  I  do  not  possess  enough 
of  the  attributes  of  immortality,  —  greed, 
hardness  of  heart,  cunning  —  all  the  bit- 
ing instincts  of  the  animal.  I  have  them 
enough  to  pain,  but  not  enough  to 
save.  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the 
immortal  man  out  of  his  abundance 
might  give  me  a  kindly  look  as  he 
passes   me  in  the   road,   a   kindly  look 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit  Bg 

out  of  the  body  of  hatred.  This  is  my 
last  priestly  affliction;  I  desire  to  be 
loved,  and  loved  for  nothing.  This  is 
my  last  foolish  hope;  I  want  to  be 
loved  by  men. 

Love  is  the  last  sadness  of  the  priest, 
and  men  turn  away  from  liim  because 
he  tries  to  love  them;  for  have  not  the 
people  that  immortal  hatred  that  is 
better  than  love.»^ 

My  wish  is  that  I  may  understand 
myself.  I  know  quite  enough  about 
other  people;  they  show  me  their  ways 
only  too  clearly.  I  want  to  appear 
interesting  in  my  own  eyes;  I  want  to 
be  something  of  value  to  myself.  I  do 
not  want  to  love.  I  want  to  study  my- 
self, because  I  am  the  nearest  and  most 
interesting  creature  that  I  know.  I 
would  like  to  be  believed  in,  so  that  I 
might  have  some  guide  to  the  behef  in 
myself.  Left  quite  alone,  my  interest 
in  myself  is  apt  to  dwindle. 

I  hke  to  be  contented  with  myself  in 
every  way,  and  to  mistrust  everything 


6o         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

that  is  not  mine.  I  am  sm^e  that  my 
som*  grapes  are  not  so  very  sour,  nor 
are  the  sweet  grapes  of  my  neighbours 
so  very  sweet;  and  it  is  indeed  possible 
that  all  kinds  of  grapes  have  very 
much  the  same  taste;  the  best  fruit 
can  only  give  out  so  much  sweetness 
and  no  more. 

With  the  terrible  moods  of  God  mov- 
ing about  me,  as  dark  clouds,  and  then 
the  lightning,  and  sometimes  the  omi- 
nous silence  and  calm,  I  turn  to  the 
stranger  upon  earth  that  once  learned 
to  bear  the  burden  of  God,  calhng  Him 
Father,  and  holding  Him,  like  Hercules 
did  the  world,  upon  His  shoulders.  I 
turn  to  the  stranger  upon  earth.  He 
who  was  not  afraid  to  call  the  terrible 
moods  "Father,"  to  take  them  into 
His  life,  to  bear  with  them,  to  love 
them.  And  still  more  than  that.  He 
dared  also  to  become  the  shepherd  of 
men;  to  live  Himself  as  a  man  and  to 
fall  before  His  Father's  terrible  mood  of 
blind  rage  working  in  men.     He  alone 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Ilernill         Gi 

dared  to  become  one  with  the  spoiler 
and  the  spoiled.  I  bow  my  head  before 
this  stranger  of  the  Earth;  and  why 
should  not  I  too  sing  a  song  of  behef 
in  Him? 

It  is  the  spring,  and  the  apple- 
blossom  is  beautiful  because  He  is  there 
in  it.  To  love  Him  is  the  only  good 
thing  in  this  world.  It  does  not  matter 
if  He  is  true;  He  is  beyond  all  Truth. 
All  things  have  breath  in  Him;  I  feel 
Him  in  the  earth.  When  I  hammer  at 
the  rocks  and  break  away  fossils  that 
have  been  there  for  millions  of  years, 
I  am  only  going  a  httle  way  into  His 
love.  When  I  look  up  in  the  night  and 
see  the  light  that  has  left  a  star  thou- 
sands of  years  ago,  I  can  only  see  a 
httle  way  into  His  love.  His  love  is  a 
terrible  love,  —  terrible  and  deep,  hard 
for  a  man  to  bear;  I  have  hved  in  it, 
I  know  it.  I  hear  people  say,  "Why 
did  He  come  here  to  this  httle  Planet; 
why  did  He  not  leave  it  out?  "  I  answer, 
"He  leaves  nothing  out;  He  cannot  give 


62         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

any  tiling  better  than  His  love;  it  is  of 
more  worth  than  immortality." 

A  future  life  is  nothing  to  me;  His 
love  is  everything.  I  study  the  rocks 
and  the  stars;  I  love  old,  very  old  his- 
tory; it  gives  me  a  breath  of  Him.  I 
love  to  know  that  matter  is  infinite, 
for  His  love  is  in  all  matter.  A  stone 
that  has  never  been  touched  by  man  is 
touched  by  Him.  The  world  says  it  is 
not  possible  to  believe  hke  this,  but  I 
know  it  is  possible.  I  would  never 
dispute  as  to  whether  Clirist  lived  or 
not;  that  does  not  matter.  It  does 
not  matter  whether  we  Hve.  Life  is 
wonderful,  but  we  only  feel  ahve  when 
we  get  near  Him,  for  near  Him  even 
Death  hveth.  He  is  the  fife  stream  of 
the  worlds;  we  are  all  in  that  stream, 
only  we  do  not  know  that  we  are  fed 
every  day  by  Him. 

I  know  quite  well  He  is  the  most 
unreal,  the  most  unthinkable  of  ideas; 
but  to  feel  Him  is  All;  to  believe  in 
Him  is  nothing.     We  send  His  love  to 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermil         63 

the  farthermost  star,  and  He  will  be 
formed  in  that  star.  When  He  is  near, 
very  near  to  us,  then  we  feel  His  ter- 
rible love  and  we  kill  Him. 

Even  now  the  mood  of  belief  is  gone 
and  I  turn  upon  myself  and  cry  out 
against  what  I  am  writing;  I  shake  all 
the  thoughts  of  love  about  my  ears, 
and  turn  Christ  into  a  worm  agcdn.  I 
look  out  again  into  the  mist;  I  sit  and 
watch  the  dim  evening  light  that  sad- 
dens the  hills;  I  see  the  days  pass,  the 
winter  days;  and  I  taste  the  creatures, 
the  bread  and  the  wine;  and  I  do  not 
feel  His  body  in  them,  the  bread  and 
the  wine!  I  feel  the  emptiness,  the 
unutterable  emptiness  of  all  the  thoughts 
in  the  world;  and  I  hearken  to  the  re- 
mote sounds  of  the  sea.  I  wonder  Avhy 
we  can  ever  leave  the  simple  clearness 
of  our  lives,  in  order  to  crawl  into  the 
underworld  of  mystery.  I  see  all  things 
common  again  and  myself  the  concunon- 
est  of  all.  I  see  the  Eternal  moods 
casting  men  over  and  over  again  into 


64         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

the  same  pit,  and  I  see  the  Christ,  a 
poor  dark  Arab,  lying  beaten  by  the 
rods  of  the  Roman  soldiers,  because 
the  wicked  sisters  of  poetry  chose  him 
out  of  all  men  to  teach  Truth, — Truth 
that  is  hateful  to  men.  Christ,  hke 
the  first  swallow,  is  a  promise  of  sum- 
mer, but  only  too  well  we  know  that 
the  sunmier  ends,  and  then  comes  "the 
winter  of  our  discontent." 

Who  can  blame  the  men  who  choose 
to  hve  the  simple  life  of  swagger  and 
bluster  and  shame  .^  For  all  those  who 
step  into  other  ways  know  what  they 
see,  but  they  do  not  often  dare  to  tell  it 
to  others.  I  ought  to  be  glad  when  I 
see  in  every  eye  the  cunning  of  deceit; 
"the  getting  eye,"  I  might  call  it,  for 
in  the  lowest  cunning  there  is  the  only 
abiding  happiness  for  man.  That  kind 
of  life  can  alone  give  him  joy,  under 
the  rule  of  the  moods  of  God.  The 
lowest  creatures  alone  have  happiness, 
and  the  children  that  do  not  know; 
and  why  should  we  teach  them.^    When 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         65 

I  look  back  at  the  past,  I  do  not  regard 
the  moods  of  God  at  all;  I  do  not  care 
whether  I  have  done  good  or  evil;  I  do 
not  care  whether  I  cursed  or  whether 
I  blessed;  I  do  not  care  whether  I  have 
been  good  or  wise;  or  whether  I  have 
ever  learned  Latin;  I  do  not  care 
whether  as  a  priest  I  have  kicked  over 
my  own  altar. 

Tliis  is  what  I  care  to  remember.  I 
I  can  feel  now  the  warmth  of  a  perfect 
day  in  June;  I  can  see  the  bugloss  on 
the  cliff,  growing  in  little  patches  of 
blue  below  the  white  chalk.  And  I 
remember  a  night  in  winter  when  I  saw 
a  white  lamb  lying  quite  dead  under  a 
clear  moon.  I  see  now  the  rough  old 
black  dog,  bhnd  of  one  eye,  that  used 
to  be  asleep  on  the  green  in  the  dog- 
days  that  are  past;  and  its  master,  a 
wild  old  man  with  a  great  stride  and 
long  beard  who  was  always  hanomering 
up  pig-styes. 

I  look  back  and  see  the  common 
things,    the   human   things;     not    God's 


66         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

moods,  or  Clirist,  or  the  wonder  that  is 
called  man's  soul.  I  believe  that  I 
have  shed  more  tears  over  my  little 
boy's  broken  engine  that  I  dug  up  one 
day  in  the  garden,  than  over  all  the 
kilhng  of  the  Son  of  Man.  I  remember 
how  I  used  to  carry  a  little  jug  and 
fetch  the  milk  across  the  green;  and 
I  see  now  the  daisies  that  came  out 
altogether  one  spring  day;  and  the 
mild  look  of  the  red  and  white  cow 
that  was  always  milked  first  and  fed 
upon  the  green  before  the  others  came 
out.  I  look  back  again  to  the  long  win- 
ters, to  the  caressing  white  mists  and 
silvery  hoar-frosts;  and  afterwards  the 
white  May  that  always  came  out  first 
on  our  hedge. 

No  doubt,  I,  like  everyone  else  who 
knows,  would  gladly  rid  myself  of  the 
deep,  fierce,  hidden  feehngs;  of  the  wild 
moods  of  God  that  tear  and  baffle 
us.  How  I  wish  that  I  could  bring  all 
the  dark  moods  up  into  the  clear  air 
of  a  high  mountain,  and  prevent  them 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit  Cy-j 

from  ever  entering  into  man  again!  I 
long  to  bring  all  the  hidden  thoughts, 
the  gnashing  of  secret  teeth  into  the 
sun.  God  must  come  out  of  His  heaven, 
the  devil  out  of  his  hell,  and  Christ 
out  of  the  soul,  into  the  light  of  the 
sun. 

Let  the  terrible  Gods  come  down  from 
on  high.  If  they  have  prepared  a  fu- 
ture life  for  us,  let  us  prepare  a  pres- 
ent hfe  for  them.  And  indeed  that  is 
just  what  Christ  the  Son  of  God  would 
have  us  do.  He  is  wiUing  to  hve  with 
us  in  the  sun;  let  us  open  our  door  to 
him.  I  will  take  Him,  and  all  the  rest 
of  the  heavenly  hosts  can  go,  and  He 
will  not  refuse  to  come.  All  the  deep 
thought  and  the  dread  marv^els  of  God 
can  go;  all  the  hidden  fears  and  these 
secret  terrors  can  go.  With  the  Son  of 
Man  beside  me  I  can  defy  the  moods; 
and  even  the  old  Devil  will  cast  his 
darts  at  me  in  vain. 

It  is  impossible  for  me,  who  am  only 
mortal,  to  keep  away  from  the  Son  of 


68         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

Man;  He  is  always  ready  to  come  in, 
and  I  am  not  able  to  shut  Him  out; 
only  those  who  have  the  immortal 
cravings  for  life  can  do  that.  He  will 
not  allow  me  to  put  Him  away;  He 
comes  in  because  it  is  His  right;  He 
comes  in  because  the  heart  of  man  is 
His  home. 

It  is  well  that  I  have  reached  this 
silence,  this  quiet  haven  that  I  longed 
for  as  a  child,  and  could  not  find. 
As  a  young  man  walking  home  in  the 
dusk  of  the  evening,  I  longed  for  it 
then.  And  as  a  man,  when  I  struck 
about  me  breaking  up  old  thoughts, 
burning,  tlirusting,  tearing,  and  at  last 
leaving  myself  naked,  I  longed  for  the 
silence  then.  I  have  feared  it;  I 
thought  that  to  reach  it  meant  death, 
the  first  step  towards  death,  and  I 
struggled.  I  have  tried  to  piece  the 
old  thoughts  together  that  as  a  man  I 
had  broken.  I  was  hke  a  child,  who 
thinking  that  she  was  too  old  to  play 
with  her  doll  had  long  ago   left  it  at 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         69 

the  bottom  of  the  cupboard;  but  was 
forced  on  a  rainy  day  to  find  it  again, 
and  to  tie  on  its  broken  arm  and  find 
it  a  new  head.  I  sought  for  my  broken 
God  again;  and  put  it  together  as  it 
used  to  be,  before  as  a  man  I  broke  it 
to  pieces. 

At  last  I  begin  to  know  myself;  I 
can  now  love  the  wonder  that  is  be- 
coming myself.  I  hve  now  as  I  wish 
to  hve;  I  take  every  day  as  it  is.  I 
do  not  try  to  break  the  day  to  pieces 
as  I  used  to  do.  The  days  pass  me  hke 
hurrying  girls  on  hght  feet.  Years 
ago  I  longed  to  hold  them  and  find  out 
what  secrets  they  had  under  their  cloud 
and  sunshine;  and  now  I  know  that  it 
is  the  days  that  long  to  find  out  my 
secret.  They  cannot  find  it  out;  they 
are  bound  to  the  wheel,  they  must 
dance  on  and  on  and  make  the  young 
men  follow  them.  And  they  are  caught 
sometimes,  these  girl  days;  they  are 
torn  and  broken  and  their  evenings  are 
muddy. 


70         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

In  my  life  there  is  human  hfe,  that  is 
all,  —  human  life.  If  anyone  wants  more 
than  that,  he  must  go  beyond  me  to 
find  it.  The  moods  hide  God  as  with  a 
garment,  but  He  can  find  me.  And  He 
has  found  me;  and  He  speaks  His  ter- 
rible words  in  the  moods  of  my  life. 
It  is  no  good  to  try  to  get  out  of  His 
way.  Everywhere  the  hand  of  the 
Devastator  is  upon  Man,  to  press  him 
down  to  the  earth. 

Only  at  times  under  His  yoke  I  have 
been  allowed  to  take  a  httle  nectar 
from  the  flowers;  I  have  hidden  my 
hand  in  a  waterfall  of  brown  hair;  I 
have  caught  a  hurried  kiss  from  a 
breathing  sunbeam.  This  is  all  we  can 
have, —  all.  It  is  impossible  to  get  more 
out  of  the  world  than  it  can  give.  It 
is  best  to  ruminate  hke  a  cow. 

The  world  is  always  rain-swept  and 
sun-cracked,  soaked  with  salt  mists 
and  splashed  with  mud;  and  our  fives 
at  the  best  are  broken  and  tlireadbare, 
wliile  death   ever   cfings   to   life,   slowly 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         71 

devouring  it.  That  is  how  we  are 
made;  and  always  the  moods  of  God 
fill  us  with  madness,  for  that  is  how 
He  is  made. 

I  have  always  longed  to  show  to 
myself  and  to  make  myself  see  where 
true  joy  is  to  be  found;  and  I  want  to 
really  beheve .  that  hfe  can  be  made  a 
beautiful  thing.  In  the  old  days  when 
I  held  my  head  in  the  sand  of  mystery, 
I  thought  that  something  wonderful 
would  happen  to  me;  and  now  I  be- 
heve that  the  most  wonderful  thing  is 
that  nothing  wonderful  happens.  We 
are,  just  as  we  are,  and  nothing  else; 
are  we  not  wonderful  enough?  By 
just  holding  up  my  hand  I  am  often- 
times filled  by  a  divine  vision;  by  only 
hearing  the  wind  howl  in  the  chimney, 
I  am  filled  with  all  the  harmony  of 
music.  By  eating  bread  I  am  fed  with 
the  whole  goodness  and  fullness  of  the 
earth.  And  when  the  silent  mood  comes, 
the  calmness  of  immense  seas  and  eter- 
nal spaces  fills  me. 


72  The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

For  a  long  time  I  liid  my  head  under 
the  sand,  and  no  wonder  I  could  not 
understand  my  own  words.  I  know 
now  that  the  things  of  greatest  value 
can  be  had  for  the  asking.  I  go  into 
the  Palace  of  the  Day,  that  Christ 
opened,  the  Palace  of  True  Joy.  How 
dehcately  and  with  what  gladness  should 
everyone  take  part  in  the  great  festival! 
The  centre  of  hfe  is  always  near;  it  is 
only  the  outer  parts  that  are  afar  off 
and  hard  to  understand. 

For  a  long  while  I  have  run  after 
the  Chariot,  and  now  I  have  climbed  in. 
I  know  now  that  the  smallest  handle 
will  do  to  hold  to  any  part  of  hfe,  and  a 
million  bodies  hke  mine  can  be  formed 
of  one  thought.  All  my  little  experi- 
ences can  be  easily  acted  in  any  part 
of  the  earth.  We  have  built  up  for 
ourselves  such  grotesque  buildings  of 
thought,  so  high  that  when  we  reach 
the  top  we  have  to  fall  off  to  the  ground. 
We  are  always  forming  such  high  desti- 
nies for  ourselves,   that  we  have  quite 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         78 


lost  count  of  the  creature  of  tlie  moods 
of  God,  that  is  ourself. 

Whenever  a  vision  has  come  to  me, 
it  has  always  taken  me  and  shewn  me 
the  dehght  of  just  hving,  — the  joy  of 
things  as  they  are,— of  the  earth  as  it  is. 
I  have  seen  only  too  clearly  that  my 
happiness  is  taken  from  me  because  of 
my  desire  to  become  something  unut- 
terable. How  often  has  my  wish  been 
to  pretend  to  be  something  that  I  am 
not,  and  to  leave  myself  in  the  shade 
w^hile  I  follow  my  shadow  in  the  sun. 
I  can  see  in  every  page  of  my  life  that 
my  happiness  has  been  taken  away  be- 
cause of  my  desire  to  get  into  another 
hfe,  rather  than  to  live  my  own.  No 
doubt  one  day  we  shall  find  all  the 
mystic  writers  leaving  their  pens  and 
their  borrowings  into  the  unutterable 
mystery  of  God's  being,  and  instead 
busy  themselves  all  day  long  peacefully 
planting  cabbages. 

God   himself  has   been   raised   up   on 
high,    like    a    stone    column    that    has 


74         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

only  its  mass  to  be  proud  of,  and  man 
is  always  content  to  knock  his  foolish 
head  against  the  base. 

I  know  that  we  have  His  moods  to 
create  us,  and  the  love  of  the  Son  of 
Man  to  save  us  from  ourselves,  and 
that  is  All  I  know.  Everyone  is  bound 
to  set  his  net  in  the  sea  of  his  Hfe,  and 
to  bring  home  in  his  net  the  fish  that 
he  deserves  or  desires,  as  the  case  may 
be;  and  he  devours  them,  or  what  is 
more  Ukely,  they  devour  him. 

I  have  described  myself,  and  have 
told  of  my  hopes  and  aspirations,  of 
my  fears  and  of  the  way  I  dig  in  my 
garden.  But  I  am  afraid  I  have  given 
quite  a  wrong  idea,  because  in  writing, 
it  is  impossible  to  forget  that  you  are 
writing.  When  you  are  writing  there 
is  always  the  wish  to  stab  the  heart  of 
the  matter;  you  want  to  get  to  the 
exciting  part  of  your  thought,  the  part 
of  your  thought  that  excites  you.  That 
is  why  I  have  tlirown  all  my  stones  at 
one  dog  and  left  my  hands  empty.     I 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         76 


would  like  to  think  how  a  friend  would 
write  about  me,  and  it  must  be  a  friend 
with  a  Httle  wit,  and  not  a  soul  that 
loves. 

The  first  part  of  my  confessions,  tell- 
ing how  I  touch  the  earth  and  sky, 
and  the  thoughts  of  man,  are  finished; 
and  I  would  hke  to  know  what  I  look 
like  from  their  point  of  view.  The 
earth  loves  me,  I  think  I  may  say  that; 
the  great  divine  Mother  presence  tells 
quite  clearly  of  her  love.  The  hills  do 
not  turn  away;  they  have  no  other  pur- 
suits, other  wars,  other  things  to  make, 
so  that  they  must  leave  me  alone. 
There  is  something  in  being  able  to 
laugh  at  a  milhon  years,  and  being 
able  to  laugh  at  the  proud  over- 
grown giants  in  Switzerland,  —  that  is 
what  our  chalk  downs  can  do.  And 
they  can  bear  me  up  in  their  arms  for 
my  Uttle  while,  and  not  so  much  as 
feel  that  a  shadow  of  life  has  passed 
over  them.  In  them  the  moods  of 
God  burn  hidden   hke  spent  lightning, 


76         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

a  dread  forsaken  fire  burning  under- 
ground. 

A  few  million  years  gives  our  hills 
time  to  reflect  upon  the  moods,  and  we 
men  need  a  little  of  the  spirit  of  their 
long-suffering,  so  that  God  Himself  may 
sink  deep  for  a  while,  nay,  may  even  be 
buried  in  us.  And  were  men  ever  to 
act  together  as  one  man,  which  was 
once  dreamed  of,  then  we  should  pre- 
sent to  the  gods  that  calm  upper  sur- 
face, that  unperturbed  grassy  height, 
and  low  meadow  land,  and  upland  fal- 
low, so  that  the  moods  themselves 
could  sink  deep  into  our  matter.  But 
alas,  our  surface  is  weak  and  each 
httle  man  must  needs  be  a  bearer  of 
good  tidings;  each  little  man  must 
needs  set  himself  under  the  hammer,  so 
that  he  on  a  very  dark  night  emits  a 
spark,  and  cries  out  in  the  night  that 
he  is  saved,  and  in  the  morning  that 
he  is  damned. 

The  hills  I  love  have  a  noble  out- 
ward presence  like  a  faithful  comrade; 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         77 

they  stay  with  me  even  when  it  rains, 
and  they  stay  for  more  than  two 
nights;  I  thank  them  for  their  silence 
and  their  gifts.  The  flowers  have  an- 
other way  with  them;  they  are  not 
so  friendly.  And  I  fear,  it  is  sad  to 
think  of  it,  that  they  have  learned 
from  their  creator  how  to  hate.  Ah! 
the  pleasure  to  a  rose  when  it  can  get 
a  thorn  into  a  human  finger;  and 
think  of  the  joy  of  a  red  berry  when  it 
poisoned  httle  Betsey;  or  the  merry 
jests  of  a  bunch  of  Mary  buds  that 
once  attracted  a  Httle  boy  into  the 
middle  of  a  swamp,  where  he  was 
drowned.  Flowers  can  speak  almost 
like  women;  I  have  seen  a  very  angry 
look  in  the  eyes  of  a  white  nettle,  be- 
cause it  could  not  sting  me;  and  the 
rage  of  a  musk  thistle  when  I  steal  its 
fragrance  without  being  pricked  is  quite 
ladyhke. 

Above  the  flowers  are  the  beasts,  or 
below  them,  —  there  is  always  a  httle 
doubt  which  to  say.     The  beast  loves 


78         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

the    man    that    has    tamed    him;     yes, 
sometimes.     And   the   gentle   creatures, 
are  they  gentle?    Will  not  a  dove  fight 
in  its  own  way,  as  fiercely  as  a  Hon,  for 
all  its  pink  eyes?    Take  up  a  wild  five 
hare    and    hold    it,    and    see    if    your 
hands  are  not  torn  by  its  claws.     The 
moods  are  beginning  to  have  claws  in 
the  beasts;  but  wait  till  we  get  to  man. 
I   wonder  what  these   beings,   that   are 
made  of  the  same  stuff  as  myself,  make 
of  me.    I  do  not  think  it  would  be  much 
good  to  take  the  opinion  of  a  country- 
man   in    this    matter.      A    ploughman 
critic  would  indeed  speak  his  mind  after 
his  own  manner,  and  that  not  unworldly, 
for  the  earthy  wit  of  the  peasant  brings 
the   art   of  the   critic   to    a   very   lean 
level  indeed,  by  judging  simply  by  what 
a  man  has.     I  own  a  cottage,  therefore 
my  value  to  the  clown  is  exactly  the 
value  of  my  cottage,  plus  the  value  of 
my    overcoat    and     the    value    of    my 
boots.     I  notice  that  the  passers-by  of 
the  fields  always  look  at  my  boots.    Do 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         79 


they  expect  to  see  the  cloven  hoof,  I 
wonder? 

A  gentleman  came  here  once  for  the 
shooting;  he  came  from  town.  I  may 
as  well  say  here,  that  he  belonged  to 
the  inomortal  type  of  man;  and  when 
he  was  not  shooting  he  attached  him- 
self to  me,  and  he  found  me  very  ready 
to  listen  to  his  bons  mots,  although 
they  were  not  quite  in  the  same  style 
as  our  Saviour's.  I  will  now,  for  a  httle 
while,  try  to  become  this  immortal  young 
man,  who  has  now  gone  somewhere  else 
for  the  shooting.  And  I  will  write  a 
httle  story  about  myself  from  the  watch- 
tower  of  this  young  man.  In  so  doing  I 
hope  to  get  at  the  other  side  of  myself, 
that  I  could  not  very  well  touch  in  the 
first  part  of  my  confessions. 

And  now,  soul  of  my  soul,  child  of 
the  moon,  I  will  begin;  I  am  trans- 
formed. 

Mr.  Thomas  is  the  only  name  that 
will  suit  the  occupier  of  the  red  house 
in  the  village  of .    Mr.  Thomas  is  so 


8o         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

utterly  different  from  his  own  name,  it 
would  be  a  cap  with  a  wrong  colour  for 
him.  His  name  should  have  come  from 
a  simple  man  who  once  upon  a  time, 
in  a  fit  of  sadness,  begat  a  son.  I  can 
never  think  of  Mr.  Thomas  by  his  real 
name.  If  I  were  to  call  out  "Powys, 
Powys,"  as  I  might  to  my  dog,  I  very 
much  doubt  whether  I  should  get  any 
answer.  If  I  were  to  call  him  by  his 
real  name,  this  story  about  him  would 
appear  to  the  public  to  be  quite  untrue, 
for  people  would  say  that  such  a  name 
could  not  have  such  a  story.  That  is 
why  I  call  him  Mr.  Thomas. 

I  would  like  to  say,  at  the  beginning, 
that  this  type,  the  type  of  Mr.  Thomas, 
is  not  a  type  that  I  approve  of.  I 
cannot  say  that  I  think  that  God  has 
expressed  His  divine  purpose  very  well 
in  this  kind  of  man,  —  a  man  that  does 
not  even  know  how  to  treat  a  trades- 
man, and  who  will  thank  a  porter  for 
doing  what  he  is  paid  to  do.  Mr. 
Thomas   has  what   I    will  call    a   very 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  liermil         8i 

care-worn  conscience,  a  conscience  that 
is  quite  unable  to  look  after  its  own 
interests. 

I  am  writing  about  him  only  "as  a 
person  that  I  have  met,"  for  heaven's 
sake  understand  that,  good  people.  I 
do  not  regard  liim  as  my  friend,  be- 
cause no  one  could  be  that,  unless  he 
were  born  under  the  same  star.  I 
used  to  see  liim  sometimes,  that  was 
all,  and  walk  with  him  a  httle,  and 
allow  him  to  hsten  to  a  few  httle 
stories  of  my  own,  and  perhaps  to 
gently  instruct  hun  in  the  art  of  hving 
a  good  hfe.  I  may  say  here  that  I 
have  no  wish  to  be  damned  with  him; 
neither  do  I  wish  to  be  caught  up  in  a 
cloud  with  him  and  carried  to  heaven. 

Mr.  Thomas  is  married  and  he  digs 
in  his  garden.  He  looks  rather  hke  a 
landscape  artist  who  has  spent  ten 
summers  in  trying  to  draw  an  old  foot- 
bridge, two  willow  trees,  and  a  cow, 
and  could  never  finish  his  picture  be- 
cause  the   cow   would   never   he   down. 


82         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

He  looks  as  if  he  has  spent  all  these 
years  in  wondering  why  the  cow  would 
never  he  down;  and  last  of  all,  his 
patience  being  quite  exhausted,  he 
packed  up  his  canvas  and  after  walking 
slowly  home  in  deep  thought,  began  to 
dig  in  liis  garden. 

The  garden  that  Mr.  Thomas  culti- 
vated was  round  about  his  house;  and 
his  house  was  in  the  middle  of  a  grass 
field;  and  anyone  going  past  could  see 
the  fines  of  potatoes  when  Mr.  Thomas 
planted  them.  And  round  the  garden 
were  very  old  railings.  I  was  talking 
to  Mr.  Thomas  one  day,  and  leaning 
over  the  raifings,  and  they  fell  in  pieces. 
I  said  I  was  very  sorry;  Mr.  Thomas 
only  smiled.  And  I  said,  being  annoyed, 
"Why  can't  you  get  some  good  iron  rail- 
ings round  your  garden  .^^"  Mr.  Thomas 
looked  at  me  in  extreme  sorrow. 

I  remember  first  seeing  Mr.  Thomas 
under  the  great  white  nose  of  the  Giant 
Cfifi",  for  his  viUage  is  near  the  sea.  I 
had  been  shooting  rabbits  with  a  rifle, 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         83 

and  I  was  beginning  to  climb  the  nar- 
row path  that  leads  to  the  top  of  the 
chff,  when  I  noticed  a  man  moving 
along  by  the  rocks  towards  the  path. 
While  I  was  on  the  shore  he  must  have 
been  amongst  the  rocks,  and  now  he 
began  to  climb  the  cliff  behmd  me, 
taking  care  to  keep  a  good  distance 
away.  When  I  rested,  he  rested,  and 
he  seemed  most  unwilhng  to  catch  me 
up.  He  no  doubt  smd  to  himself, 
"There  is  no  hurry;  I  will  wait  here 
until  that  person  is  gone."  Well,  I 
waited  just  over  the  brow  of  the  cliff, 
where  he  could  not  see  me,  and  when 
he  did  appear  I  inquired  of  him  the  way 
to  his  village.  And  hke  all  nervous 
people  he  could  not  give  me  a  direct 
answer;  he  spoke  as  if  he  did  not  know. 
And  then  he  told  me  the  different  at- 
tributes of  the  ways  that  I  might  take; 
and  last  of  all  he  offered  to  show  me 
the  way  himseff. 

As  we  walked   I  knew   Mr.   Thomas 
was  what  we  call   in   the  polite  world 


84  The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

a  "crank";  he  walked  as  if  at  any 
moment  the  earth  might  give  way; 
and  as  we  looked  across  the  bay  to- 
wards the  Isle  of  Shngers,  he  kept  a 
very  proper  distance  from  the  cliff 
edge. 

My  first  impression  of  Mr.  Thomas 
was  a  curious  feehng  that  he  was  hid- 
ing something;  or  that  he  was  the 
guardian  of  a  treasure  of  wliich  he  was 
not  allowed  to  speak.  And  he  seemed 
to  fear  me,  and  when  I  pointed  out  to 
him  the  beauty  of  the  green  sea-weed 
far  below  us  he  turned  hurriedly  to- 
wards the  setting  sun.  I  belong  myself 
to  one  of  the  hberal  professions,  and  I 
have  cultivated  a  proper  manner  to 
use  with  my  inferiors.  Mr.  Thomas 
spoke  rather  quickly,  in  a  low  tone,  and 
I  did  not  often  reply;  he  wanted  to  say 
fooHsh  things  about  the  weather,  and  I 
let  him.  I  could  tell  how  nervous  he 
was  by  his  hurried  way  of  speaking, 
and  by  the  way  he  fell  over  the  white 
stones   that  coastguards  put  along  the 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         85 

path  and  wliilewash,  so  that  they  may 
see  the  way  on  a  dark  night;  and  I 
walked  in  the  path,  there  being  only- 
room  for  one. 

Mr.  Thomas  talked  of  his  favourite 
snug  corners  by  tlie  sea,  as  a  bird 
would  of  his  resting  places,  with  the 
fear  all  the  time  in  his  heart  that  I 
might  rob  him  of  them.  And  then  he 
talked  about  the  working  people  that 
are  called  laboiu'ers,  because  he  hap- 
pened to  see  one.  We  passed  a  tumu- 
lus covered  with  brambles,  the  chief 
growth  in  that  part  of  the  country. 
Between  the  brambles  there  w  as  a  way, 
as  though  someone  was  in  the  habit  of 
chmbing  up,  —  no  doubt  Mr.  Thomas 
himself,  —  and  Mr.  Thomas  found  his 
way  to  the  top  and  looked  towards  the 
distant  hills,  and  then  at  me.  And  he 
told  me  about  a  clump  of  trees  (I  never 
looked,  though  he  pointed  at  it),  that 
marked  a  deep  pit  hke  the  upper  part 
of  a  funnel,  so  he  said,  that  an  old  bot- 
anist called  Culpepper  used    to   boil  liis 


86         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

potions  in,  and  he  told  me  that  in  a 
certain  direction  there  was  a  hne  of 
hills  that  marked  the  middle  of  the 
county;  and  a  tower  that  was  some- 
body's "folly,"  —  goodness  knows  where 
that  was.  We  talked  of  poetry;  Mr. 
Thomas  told  me  about  one  of  his  fav- 
ourite poems,  a  poem  that  could  be 
loved,  he  said,  by  a  saint  and  by  a  sin- 
ner. He  had  the  book  in  his  pocket 
and  read  me  one  verse  as  we  walked. 
He  said  it  was  virginal,  a  verse  for  a 
child  to  learn.  Here  is  the  verse,  he 
read  only  one. 

The  dew  no  more  will  weep 
The  primrose's  pale  cheek  to  deck; 

The  dew  no  more  will  sleep 
Nuzzled  in  the  hly's  neck; 
Much  rather  would  it  tremble  here 
And  leave  them  both  to  be  thy  tear. 

And  thus  we  walked  over  great  fields, 
filled,  every  one  of  them,  with  stones, 
everlasting  stones;  not  smooth  shining 
pebbles,  —  sharp  zigzag  flints.     And  the 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         87 

chalk  of  the  hills  in  places  broke 
through  the  thin  covering  of  grass, 
like  the  skin  of  a  beggar  showing  tlirough 
her  ragged  clothing.  We  went  tlirough  a 
gate  that  a  man  whom  we  had  seen 
slouching  along  in  front  of  us  had  left 
half  open.  Mr.  Thomas  persisted  in 
spending  quite  ten  minutes  to  fasten 
some  barbed  wire  round  the  top  of  this 
gate;  and  in  answer  to  my  question  as 
to  why  he  did  it,  he  said,  "These 
people  never  shut  the  gates;  the  sheep 
will  get  in,  and  when  I  come  this  way 
again,  I  shall  have  to  drive  them  out." 
"The  farmer  ought  to  put  up  a  no- 
tice about  the  gate,"  I  said.  "It  was  the 
farmer  who  left  the  gate  open,"  Mr. 
Thomas  gently  rephed. 

I  left  Mr.  Thomas  by  liis  own  door, 
or  rather  by  his  railings,  and  I  walked 
through  the  village  street  to  the  inn. 
The  inn-keeper  was  feeding  his  pigs, 
and  after  he  had  finished  feeding  them, 
he  shewed  me  a  badger  that  he  kept 
in  a  barrel.     Mr.    Thomas'    house   was 


88         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

visible  from  the  Inn-yard,  and  I  could 
see  that  he  was  hoeing  in  his  garden. 
I  looked  around  me.  The  land  was  not  a 
fat  land;  the  grass,  like  the  tliin  clothes 
of  the  labourers,  only  just  covered  up 
the  poverty  beneath.  I  asked  the  land- 
lord about  Mr.  Thomas,  but  he  had 
not  much  to  tell  me,  beyond  the  fact 
that  "he  hved  over  there,"  pointing  to 
the  house. 

Mr.  Thomas  did  not  give  me  a  very 
cordial  welcome  when  I  called  in  the 
morning,  and  he  did  not  want  to  come 
out;  but  I  dragged  him  from  whatever 
he  was  doing,  I  don't  know  what  it 
was,  and  compelled  liim  to  come  out 
with  me.  We  walked  along  the  cold 
hills,  cold  as  if  the  ice  that  made  and 
modelled  them  still  froze  the  ground. 
We  went  along  a  path  going  continu- 
ally uphill,  like  the  narrow  path  that 
leads  to  heaven.  And  in  a  hollow 
place  near  a  pond  we  came  upon  an 
empty  cottage,  near  a  tumble-down 
barn;    we   looked   through   the   broken 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         89 

window  at  the  stone  floor  and  open  grate 
of  the  hving  room,  —  an  Enghshman's 
home  in  Arcadia.  "No  one  hves  here 
now,"  he  said;  "that  is  why  I  hke  to 
come  this  way." 

The  next  thing  that  we  did  was  to 
tramp  across  a  heavy  ploughed  field, 
and  then  along  by  a  hedge  filled  with 
nettles  and  sharp  thorns,  and  in  one 
place  I  saw  the  half-eaten  carcass  of  a 
sheep;  and  in  a  pit  there  were  the 
bones  of  a  horse  among  the  cowshps. 
Mr.  Thomas  regarded  these  phenomena 
with  the  same  gentle  look,  as  being  part 
of  the  accepted  order  of  things.  After 
a  wliile  Mr.  Thomas  grew  less  shy  of 
me,  and  he  began  to  confide  to  me 
some  of  his  ideas,  —  ideas  about  God 
and  the  weather.  We  will  take  his 
ideas  about  the  weather  first.  He 
thought  the  rain-drops  beat  with  per- 
sistent spite  upon  him;  and  that  the 
wind  buffeted  him  as  if  it  loved  doing 
it.  He  thought  the  storms  always  waited 
until  he  wanted  to  go  out,  and  then  fell 


go         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

merrily  upon  his  head.  And  yet  I 
think  he  was  in  a  better  mood  on  a 
dull  day  than  when  the  sun  shone.  He 
did  not  hke  to  turn  away  from  the  sun, 
and  was  never  easy  with  his  back  to  it. 
This  may  have  been  the  instinctive 
wilhng  of  some  plant  in  him,  for  his 
nature  belonged  to  the  plant  tribe  that 
grows  in  wild  places.  He  used  to  he  on 
the  long  withered  cliff  grass  in  the 
winter  and  take  in  to  liis  body  the  little 
warmth  that  came  from  the  sun,  hke  a 
beaten  elder  tree  that  waited  for  the 
spring. 

I  hked  to  torment  him  and  drive 
him  out  of  his  last  stronghold,  and  then 
see  what  he  would  say;  and  how  he 
would  try  to  escape  me.  Mr.  Thomas 
belonged  to  the  type  of  man  that  can 
be  cut  down  in  a  moment  with  words. 
He  could  be  put  out  of  action  with  one 
or  two  simple  remarks  that  touched  his 
pride;  and  then  he  would  simply  go 
into  his  shell  hke  a  hermit  crab;  he 
would  detach  himself  from  all  that  he 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         qi 

had  and  keep  only  his  skin.  And  llien 
if  the  attack  were  pushed,  which  was 
always  worth  doing,  that  last  hope  in 
his  own  life  would  be  taken  away,  and 
he  would  feel  himself  completely  gone 
into  nothingness.  Tliis  condition  of  his 
completed  the  jest,  and  he  would  walk 
home  across  the  stony  fields,  a  little 
tired. 

But  after  a  day  or  two  he  would  pos- 
sess himself  again,  fully  clothed  and  in 
his  right  mind,  believing  in  himself,  and 
even  going  so  far  as  to  think  that  he 
had  in  his  soul  a  few  httle  things  of 
which  he  might  be  proud,  and  also 
that  he  had  a  few  more  cigarettes  to 
smoke.  And  the  next  time  I  saw  him 
I  would  give  him  a  hint  about  the  good 
that  he  might  find  in  himself  if  he  ate 
a  httle  of  the  apple  that  grows  in  the 
middle  of  the  garden.  And  I  explained, 
as  well  as  I  could,  that  everything  is 
made  by  God  for  the  amusement  of 
man;  and  that  the  good  and  evil  in 
life  should  be  kept  very  separate,  other- 


92  The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

wise  we  should  never  enjoy  being  evil, 
or  ever  be  bored  by  being  good. 

I  tried  in  this  way  to  teach  Mr. 
Thomas  a  httle  about  the  ethics  of  the 
Christian  churches,  especially  the  Angli- 
can Church  of  Great  Britain.  I  told 
him  that  popular  opinion,  the  opinion 
of  the  butchers  and  their  customers, 
would  be  for  ever  unto  the  end  against 
"that  horrid  German,"  and  "that 
wicked  Jew,"  who  both  tried  to  untie 
the  priestly  knot  that  hangs  up  the 
world,  and  not  only  hangs  it  up,  but 
holds  it  up. 

I  tried  to  explain  to  Mr.  Thomas 
that  the  mass  of  humanity  loves  to  be 
good  and  to  sin,  by  turns, — to  sin  and 
repent  and  to  sin  again,  just  as  the  sun 
repents  and  covers  the  earth  with  its 
glory  after  the  dark  rains  of  the  night. 
It  is  necessary,  I  said,  for  the  priest 
to  invent  every  morning  new  sins  for 
the  people;  golden  calves  and  pretty 
dancers.  And  the  priest  must  show 
the   people   how   to   enjoy   them.     And 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  llermll         qS 

sometimes  for  a  change  lie  can  throw 
into  the  cup  of  their  gladness  one  or 
two  httle  pills  of  virtue,  for  the  sake  of 
their  bowels. 

"And  now,  my  good  Mr.  Thomas," 
I  said,  "for  heaven's  sake  do  not  throw 
me  into  that  ice  water  of  beyond 
thought  that  your  mad  German  loved 
so  well."  Mr.  Thomas  used  to  wait  for 
a  shining  light  to  come;  he  used  to 
w£ut  like  a  hen  brooding  over  her  eggs; 
he  used  to  brood  in  odd  corners  and 
try  to  hatch  a  httle  god  out  of  his  eggs, 
—  a  httle  god  that  would  save  his  type, 
the  outcast  monk  type,  from  the  well- 
deserved  stones  and  jeers  of  the  people. 
I  need  not  say  that  all  his  eggs  were 
addled,  for  he  never  got  anything  out 
of  them,  sit  as  long  as  he  might. 

He  would  not  believe,  although  I 
told  liim  over  and  over  again,  that  it  is 
the  weight  of  the  mass  of  humanity  that 
bears  the  world  along;  and  that  nothing 
can  change  its  course,  not  even  the 
hghtning  of  the  gods,  nor  the  thoughts 


g/i         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

of  little  monk  priests.  Mr.  Thomas 
never  even  hatched  a  little  devil  out  of 
the  eggs  that  he  brooded  over,  and  he 
knew  it.  He  knew  that  he  had  found 
nothing;  he  knew  that  he  had  searched 
the  orchard  and  had  not  even  found 
the  crab;  he  knew  that  all  liis  life  he 
had  lived  in  a  mystic  alley  that  leads 
no  whither. 

I  tried  to  show  him  what  life  is,  as 
we  know  it,  as  we  the  happy  ones  have 
made  it;  and  I  told  him  that  the  one 
thing  to  avoid,  the  one  thing  that 
really  gives  pain,  is  what  is  called  "the 
serious  state  of  mind,"  —  the  brooding, 
the  dark  brooding  of  the  dead  stars. 
"The  good  God  looks  down  from  on 
high."  "The  priests  say  so,  and  that 
is  all  we  want  to  know  about  Him." 
And  when  I  said  this  Mr.  Thomas 
gently  stroked  his  beard,  and  smiled, 
and  inquired  whether  I  had  a  cigarette 
in  my  case,  as  he  had  left  his  at  home. 

Standing  on  the  cliff  top  one  day  and 
looking  towards  the  town  over  the  sea, 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit         ()5 

I  asked  Mr.  Thomas  ^vlly  he  did  not 
live  down  there,  instead  of  the  dreary 
spot  that  he  had  chosen.  He  waited 
for  a  httle  while  and  then  said,  "I  Hke 
the  language  of  these  hills  better;  they 
are  higher  up"  (wliich  indeed  was 
true),  "and  amongst  those  church  spires 
I  fear  that  the  people  do  not  always 
speak  the  truth."  "But,"  I  said," their 
lies  are  public  lies;  they  live  by  public 
opinion;  they  all  have  one  object  in 
hfe,  and  what  that  is,  the  smallest  serv- 
ant girl  knows  best." 

Human  life  is  only  innocent  when  it 
lives  in  the  fairyland  of  fancy;  if  it 
goes  running  after  the  gods,  it  becomes 
mad;  if  it  goes  running  back  to  the 
beasts,  it  becomes  like  a  nation  at  war; 
the  best  thing  it  can  do  is  to  stay 
where  it  is.  Humanity  reached  its 
goal  when  it  became  man;  and  it  is  in 
the  same  world  now,  because  this  is 
the  only  world  it  can  have;  it  must 
go  on  just  as  it  has  gone  on,  and 
that  forever.     "  That  German"  thought  of 


gG         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

something  more  wonderful  than  Man, 
and  he  ran  to  the  gods  —  mad.  "That 
Jew,"  thought  of  something  wonderful; 
He  thought  of  adopting  a  Father; 
and  He  thought  of  mankind  loving 
one  another;  and  He  went  to  the 
Cross. 

Man  develops  on  certain  lines,  and 
then  explodes  and  goes  on  again  on  the 
same  hues.  If  he  tries  to  climb  up  to 
the  gods,  he  goes  mad,  and  a  vulture 
devours  him.  He  is  only  right  if  he 
remains  just  what  he  is,  simply  a  man. 
He  has  scholarships,  science,  and  a  mil- 
lion industries.  He  has  municipal  gar- 
dens, and  school  play-grounds.  His 
priests  are  now  grown  quite  big  enough 
to  drive  away  the  little  gods  that  come 
in  the  night;  and  he  can  always  enjoy 
excitement  in  the  body  politic  by  pinch- 
ing the  ears  of  the  women.  He  can 
believe  in  a  future  life;  he  can  beheve 
in  a  future  death;  he  can  believe  that 
Christ  is  God,  and  that  God  is  Christ, 
and   that   Christ   is   man,   but   he   can 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Tlermil         97 

never  fill  the  cup  fuller  than  his  man- 
hood will  hold. 

See  how  genius  at  a  certain  point 
always  breaks  down.  "That  German" 
went  a  httle  too  far,  and  when  he  came 
to  the  two  kings  and  the  last  Pope,  he 
went  mad.  And  the  other  one,  "the 
Jew,"— he  went  on  preaching  very  well 
to  the  people,  until  by  a  sad  mischance, 
the  people  began  to  understand  what 
he  •  said,  and  when  the  people  under- 
stood, instead  of  going  mad  themselves, 
they  killed  Him. 

That  is  the  way  of  the  world,  and  it 
happens  like  that  because  man's  mind 
can  only  go  to  a  certain  point,  and 
then  it  breaks.  Every  mind  breaks 
when  it  does  more  than  a  man  can  do, 
and  it  breaks  in  unexpected  ways.  The 
duty  of  a  philosopher  (and  the  modern 
philosopher  knows  liis  duty)  is  to  keep 
the  sheep;  that  is  to  say,  to  drive  the 
wolves  of  thought  aw  ay  from  the  people, 
and  hang  the  wolves  up  —  in  hard  and 
long  words,  in  the  pliilosophers'  complex 


gS         The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

minds  that  are  fitted  out  with  httle  hooks 
to  hang  each  wolf  up  by. 

The  priests  who  also  know  their  duty 
have  to  keep  the  gods  away  from  the 
flock,  for  fear  the  flock  might  give 
away  some  of  its  wool,  or  perhaps  even 
a  ewe  lamb,  here  and  there,  without  a 
priest's  blessing. 

If  either  of  these  guardians  neglects 
his  duty,  the  people  quite  rightly  de- 
vour him.  "It  looks  like  that,  —  that 
is  how  the  world  looks,"  answered  Mr. 
Thomas.  And  yet  why  should  we  not 
believe  a  little  and  love  a  httle,  even  if 
we  do  go  mad? 

I  think  sometimes  when  I  come  home 
tired  to  my  gate,  that  I  must  not  come 
in.  I  think  that  I  must  go  on  walking 
past  my  gate,  through  the  one  or  two 
viUages  where  I  am  known,  and  then 
on  and  on  and  on. 

When  Jesus  adopted  God  as  His 
Father,  He  made  God  begin  again  as 
a  Babe.  When  He  took  everything 
away  from  Himself,  He  took  everything 


The  SolUoqiiy  of  a  Hermit         09 

away  from  His  Father;  we  that  are 
fathers  know  that  a  son  can  do  that. 
No  one  need  try  to  take  God  and  put 
Him  upon  a  great  white  tlirone,  when 
His  Son  has  taken  Him  down.  When 
the  Son  gave  up  all  power,  the  Father 
had  to  give  up  all  power  too;  when  the 
Son  gave  up  life,  it  was  the  Father's 
life  that  He  gave  up,  as  well  as  His 
own. 

There  is  no  need  for  us  to  become 
anything  more  than  what  we  are,  in 
order  to  beheve  in  the  Son  of  Man. 
We  can  enter  all  that  He  has  entered; 
we  can  give  up  all  that  He  has  given 
up,  without  being  a  superman  or  a 
brute  beast.  It  is  not  in  extremes  that 
the  road  to  Heaven  hes;  the  way  to 
life  is  the  same  now  as  it  has  ever 
been;  it  is  in  the  meaning  of  things. 
Surely  the  Son  of  God  has  shown  him- 
self in  a  form  that  we,  even  we,  can 
understand. 

The  people  marked  Him  as  an  enemy, 
and   His   presence   in  us  will   one   day 


100       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

make  the  impossible  come  to  pass;  that 
day  will  come.  We  feel  that  we  are 
at  an  end;  we  feel  that  we  are  come  to 
our  goal;  but  at  the  same  time  we 
know  that  there  is  "that  other"  be- 
longing to  us,  "that  other  one"  who 
is  with  us  and  knows  no  end. 

Every  day  I  look  at  the  fields  as 
though  I  am  soon  to  bid  them  an  eter- 
nal farewell.  Perhaps  my  life  has  passed 
through  many  bodies  and  I  am  the  last. 
A  star  of  life  with  its  own  colour,  its 
own  raiment  and  its  own  joys  has 
entered  into  me  to  die.  But  the  star 
has  still  its  desires  and  its  longings;  I 
do  not  want  its  light  to  go  out  like  a 
snuffed  candle.  I  would  hke  it  to  live 
again  in  some  other  body;  I  would  like 
it  to  feel  the  earth  through  many,  many 
other  lives.  I  do  not  wish  to  be  the 
grave  for  the  death  of  a  star.  I  want 
it  to  carry  my  hfe  on,  and  on,  and  on. 
And  yet  it  is  only  when  a  star  is  dying 
in  you  that  you  can  feel  its  life;  and 
it  is  only  when  a  star  is  dying  in  you 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit       loi 

that  you   can   feel   the   sorrows   of  the 
Son  of  Man. 

And  this  is  the  way  that  Mr.  Thomas 
used  to  talk.  I  waved  my  stick  as  I 
passed  his  gate  on  my  way  back  to 
town.  He  held  a  spade  in  his  hand, 
and  was  digging  a  hole  in  the  ground 
for  a  new  post  to  hold  up  his  raihngs. 
I  waved  my  stick,  and  he,  taking  very 
httle  notice,  went  on  with  his  work. 

When  anyone  reads  a  confession  like 
this  they  should  express  no  phihstine 
reflection  such  as,  "This  good  man 
might  have  done  better  with  his  life"; 
or,  "If  we  all  start  writing  confessions, 
what  a  world  it  would  be!"  I  suppose 
I  have  the  priest's  instinctive  dehght 
—  or  love,  shall  we  say  —  of  hearing  a 
tale  that  comes  from  a  man's  fear  rather 
than  from  his  wits;  and  in  speaking  or 
writing  a  confession,  one  is  always  com- 
ing near  to  sometliing  ugly  in  the  dark 
of  oneself.  I  touch  the  hoof,  or  the  fur, 
or  the  horns,  or  the  tusks,  as  I  write. 


102        The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

It  is  this  ugly  thing  that  has  a  way 
of  peeping  out  at  us  when  we  talk 
Eibout  ourselves;  and  the  sight  of  half 
its  head,  not  a  very  pretty  half,  makes 
most  people  begin  to  talk  about  some- 
tliing  else.  If  you,  my  dear  child  or 
brother,  begin  to  tell  a  few  secrets  of 
your  own  being,  you  will  know  what  I 
mean.  You  will  find,  dear  friend,  when 
you  take  your  pen  to  begin,  and  poke 
about  with  your  finger  and  thumb  into 
your  own  heart,  that  you  touch  some- 
thing not  at  all  nice,  not  exactly  what 
you  thought. 

It  is  the  custom,  I  know,  not  to  con- 
fess; to  let  that  inside  of  you  remain 
hidden  under  a  well-ordered  fife;  and 
besides  it  does  not  do  to  risk  being 
laughed  at  by  the  people.  I  know  that 
in  every  confession  there  is  always 
worse  left  beliind  than  what  is  said;  for 
we  none  of  us  dare  to  utter  the  whole 
of  our  wickedness.  I  cannot  help  think- 
ing that  many  of  the  pangs  of  human 
life  were  quieted  and  stilled  by  the  use 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit        io3 

of  the  confessional.  Anyliow,  lo  look 
at  oneself  with  rather  more  than  a 
critical  eye  is  a  good  thing;  if  only  to 
show  the  gods  that  they  could  do  a 
little  better  with  our  substance  another 
day. 

One  can  see,  while  writing  odd  things 
about  oneself,  that  inside  the  mob 
still  rules,  just  as  it  does  outside  in  the 
world.  And  the  mob  may  be  rioting 
quite  merrily  under  a  pohceman's  jacket, 
or  corrupting  innocence  under  lawn 
sleeves  in  a  cathedral.  I  think  that  the 
mob,  —  I  know  them,  even  hidden  in  a 
snug  English  village,  —  I  think  that  the 
mob  will  always  rule;  for  it  is  by  the 
law  of  hate  and  not  by  the  law  of  love 
that  the  world  lives  and  has  its  being. 

In  the  world  there  will  never  be 
security,  but  there  will  always  be  excite- 
ment; and  there  is  no  reason  why  we 
should  not  sometimes  get  excited  about 
ourselves,  and  by  so  doing  reveal  our- 
selves as  something  more  than  creatures 
to  be  fed. 


io4       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

I  think  every  father  would  do  very 
well  to  write  a  book  of  his  own  short- 
comings for  his  children  to  read.  And 
perhaps  so  many  fathers,  who  nowa- 
days appear  so  very  foolish  to  their 
families,  might  by  writing  their  con- 
fessions, show  their  children  that  they 
did  not  sign  cheques  and  say  family 
prayers  by  clockwork,  being  wound  up 
every  evening  by  the  cook  in  the  best 
parlour.  The  fear  of  looking  a  fool  has 
cost  the  world  more  good  lives  than  it 
wots  of. 

We  go  about  the  world  being  friendly, 
but  the  mob  always  tells  us  where  to  go, 
and  how  to  confine  our  friendhness  to 
the  railway  carriage,  and  our  morals  to 
our  homes.  The  mob  soon  breaks  our 
windows,  if  we  do  not  behave  after  its 
manner.  All  our  little  moral  sensations 
are  upon  the  surface  of  our  hves;  it 
is  the  great  immoralist  that  lies  beneath. 
And  you  have  not  got  to  go  very  far 
into  the  lives  of  the  people  before  you 
come  upon  him. 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit        io5 

In  writing  my  confessions  1  began  to 
take  notice  of  my  pride.  I  found  my- 
self so  proud  that  I  preferred  to  leave 
the  camel  drivers  and  suffer  cold,  rather 
than  endure  their  loud  laughter.  And 
I  see  quite  well  that  there  is  no  getting 
to  the  bottom  of  the  pride  of  a  man. 
We  cannot  take  cover  from  our  pride. 
I  think  it  quite  hkely  that  the  least 
pride  is  found  in  the  busiest  man,  and 
the  most,  in  an  idle  slave.  We  cannot 
get  away  from  our  pride,  do  what  we 
will.  And  my  pride  is  quite  a  plain 
tiling  to  see  even  in  these  pages.  I 
show  it  on  purpose;  I  am  proud;  I 
like  to  be  proud;  1  intend  to  be  proud. 
I  know  the  pride  of  a  saint  when  he 
shuts  himself  up  away  from  the  world; 
I  know  the  pride  of  a  sinner  when  he 
boasts  to  the  mob  of  what  he  can  do. 
The  very  fact  that  I  love  those  Hnes  of 
Banyan, 

"He  that  is  down  need  fear  no  fall, 
He  that  is  low  no  pride." 


io6        The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

shows  how  proud  I  am.  Ah!  shepherd 
boy  in  the  valley,  I  know  thy  ways, 
and  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  Lord 
Mayor  of  London  has  a  heart  less 
proud  than  thine. 

We  that  love  to  be  at  the  bottom, 
we  saints  in  the  wilderness,  we  humble 
people  in  the  fields,  we  peaceful  people 
in  leafy  lanes.  It  is  with  reason  that 
the  city  man,  the  wicked  sinner,  should 
treat  us  somewhat  roughly,  for  he  fears 
us,  —  he  fears  that  if  he  did  not  speak 
very  loud,  we  might  make  him  take  off 
his  shoes  when  he  comes  into  our  garden, 
and  stand  in  the  mud  with  bare  feet. 
Perhaps  if  we  of  the  saintly  tribe,  we 
exempt  ones, — if  we  were  compelled  to 
be  iron  kings,  or  wheat  kings,  or  petrol 
kings,  —  it  is  possible  that  we  saints 
might  relinquish  some  of  our  abomi- 
nable pride.  The  very  size  of  our  palaces 
would  then  diminish  some  of  our  big- 
ness. I  can  make  myself  out  to  be  a 
saint,  I  can  pull  myself  to  pieces  as  a 
sinner,  I  can  show  myself  as  a  fool  in 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit       107 

a  world  of  folly.  We  are  all  little  men 
that  eat  off  the  earth's  crust;  I  am 
one  of  the  mob,  that  is  all  that  can  be 
said. 

I  am  told  by  one  wiser  than  I  that 
I  must  tlirow  more  hght  upon  this  sub- 
ject of  immortality  that  I  have  alluded 
to  here  and  there.  I  am  quite  willing 
to  make  my  meaning  more  clear;  I 
do  not  want  to  be  misunderstood,  and 
this  is  what  I  think.  I  beheve  that  the 
more  dead  anything  is  the  more  it 
lasts;  and  the  more  ignoble  a  thing  is 
the  longer  it  lasts.  The  most  base 
thing  in  me  longs  the  most  to  hve  for- 
ever. I  may  as  well  say  that  it  is  from 
my  own  feelings  that  I  get  my  thoughts 
upon  immortality.  And  I  know  my- 
self a  httle.  I  also  know  that  I  get  the 
thought  from  Him. 

The  most  wonderful  idea  that  has 
ever  come  to  man  came  to  Jesus.  It 
came  to  Him  silent,  subtile,  and  Uke 
the  hghtning.  The  idea  that  came  to 
Him  was  this:    He  wished  to  create  for 


io8        The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

a  moment  a  state  of  vision  with  no 
earthly  everlasting  deadness  about  it; 
to  create  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth. 
The  longer  anything  lasts,  the  worse  it 
always  becomes,  but  the  divine  idea 
came  to  Jesus  without  beginning  and 
without  end;  and  in  a  moment  it  be- 
came Himself. 

We  cannot  conceive  the  hghtning 
rapidity  in  which  the  vision  of  true 
life  enters  in  and  passes  out  of  our 
minds.  Our  minds  do  not  hke  this 
kind  of  thing;  they  are  not  used  to  it; 
only  by  a  strange  chance  Jesus  held  the 
new  idea  for  a  moment,  and  that  mo- 
ment gave  Him  time  to  understand, 
because  He  was  the  one  that  was  ready 
to  understand. 

Just  such  a  wonderful  moment  may 
have  come  by  a  happy  or  an  unhappy 
chance  to  a  beast,  and  that  was  the 
moment  that  made  the  beast  into  a 
man.  What  Jesus  saw  and  hved,  we 
may  see  and  live;  only  we  prefer  the 
immortahty  of  our  earth  that  we  have 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit       log 

always  had,  lo  the  new  lieaveii  of 
Jesus.  We  would  rather  hve  in  part 
dead  for  a  great  many  hves,  than 
sheu'e  with  Jesus  His  kingdom  for  a 
moment.  His  vision,  His  idea,  was  the 
frailest  beginning,  the  most  delicate  and 
the  most  quickly  killed,  of  any  idea  that 
has  ever  come  to  man. 

Our  immortal  baseness  is  trained  and 
schooled;  is  organized  to  cast  out  at 
once  this  kind  of  vision.  We  know 
only  too  well  that  our  old  happiness, 
our  old  God-head,  our  old  immortality 
is  imperiled  by  it.  We  know  the  danger 
of  a  vision  that  filled  one  man  so  sud- 
denly with  burning  light,  burning  Him 
up  in  a  moment,  and  leaving  Him  only 
a  wild  mad  thing,  crying  out  desperate 
and  loving  words.  We  know  the  danger 
of  a  vision  that  burnt  the  immortal 
man  in  Him  right  out  in  a  moment, 
and  left  a  new  man  with  a  strange,  a 
wild  and  unearthly  courage,  a  man 
from  whom  the  mob  took  toll  and 
laughter,  and  then  after  a  httle  while, 


no       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

fearing  for  themselves,  hanged  Him  upon 
the  cross. 

The  whole  atmosphere  of  om*  hves 
bm"sts  out  in  rage  against  tliis  other 
sense,  this  new  vision,  that  ends  in  a 
moment  our  immortality.  We  cannot 
graft  our  everlasting  hfe  into  the  vision 
that  He  beheld;  our  immortahty  goes 
on  and  on,  and  if  we  want  to  enter  the 
Vision  of  Jesus,  we  must  stop  our  char- 
iot. This  vision,  this  new  heaven,  is 
life  in  a  moment;  but  our  way  of  life 
is  everlasting  years. 

The  result  of  the  vision  is  quite  clear 
in  the  kind  of  man  that  Jesus  was. 
Though  the  vision  died  down  in  Him  at 
times,  all  the  signs  of  our  immortal 
greed  for  hfe,  in  His  life,  are  dead.  He 
begins  to  eat  of  the  earth  as  a  sacra- 
ment, and,  wonder  of  wonders.  He  can 
love  and  bless  men  instead  of  turning 
fiercely  upon  the  will  to  devour,  —  He 
must  have  seen  that  in  the  mob,  — 
instead  of  cursing  the  base  hves  of  men, 
and   their   hungry   laughter,   instead   of 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Tlermil        iii 

casting  all  the  thoughts  of  man  away, 
He  blesses  them.  He  opened  the  way 
to  a  new  life,  and  He  longed  that  the 
vision  that  will  free  man  from  his  im- 
mortality may  come  to  all,  and  be 
received  by  all. 

No  wonder  man  fled  from  this  kind 
of  freedom;  for  we  prefer  to  retain  the 
immortality  that  is  our  right.  I  can 
hear  many  people  declaim,  being  quite 
amazed  at  my  utter  disregard  for  estab- 
lished behefs.  I  can  hear  them  shout, 
"We  do  not  want  to  end,  thou  thrice 
foolish  Mr.  Thomas,  we  do  not  want  to 
end;  we  will  all  most  willingly,  without 
any  asking  of  questions,  take  the  im- 
mortahty  that  you  in  your  folly  so 
roundly  cry  out  upon.  Give  us  that 
immortality;  it  is  just  what  we  all  pray 
for.  Remove  from  us,  take  out  of  our 
sight  forever,  this  vision  that  takes 
away  our  precious  lives;  do  not  leave  us 
alone  with  Jesus;  perhaps  some  good 
kind  pastor  will  come  between.  Do  not 
take  anything  more  away  from  us;  we 


112       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

want  more  than  our  lives,  we  want  to 
go  on  living."  I  can  hear  people  of 
the  world  shout  out  at  me  like  this; 
and  I  say  to  them,  "Goodly  people, 
kindly  livers,  who  sometimes  offer  life- 
belts to  women  when  the  ship  is  sink- 
ing, I  hear  all  your  loud  shouting,  I 
answer  quite  calmly,  'You  will  go  on 
living,  dear  children;  did  not  your 
fathers  hate,  just  as  you  hate;  did  not 
they  get  things,  just  as  you  get  things; 
did  not  they  eat  their  dinners  and  leave 
the  beggars  outside,  just  as  you  and  I 
eat  our  dinners?'" 

I  can  promise  that  our  pretending  at 
httle  games  of  Virtue  never  in  the 
least  hampers  our  real  lives;  our  real 
lives  go  on  through  many  years  just 
in  the  same  way.  Your  thoughts, 
exactly  your  thoughts  and  not  an- 
other's, will  be  always  here;  the  im- 
mortal part  of  you,  your  man-self,  must 
go  on,  because  it  does  not  desire  to  be 
anything  else  than  itself.  It  is  never 
worn  out;  it  has  the  best  of  systems  — 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit       ii3 

separate  bodies  to  live  in;  when  you 
are  old,  or  perhaps  before  that  time, 
you  will  die;  but  that  will  mean 
nothing  to  you,  and  your  immortahty 
will  just  dance  away  as  merrily  as 
ever. 

All  this  is  very  easy  to  explain;  but 
the  way  of  Jesus  is  not  so  easy.  He 
made  a  way  that  opposed  every  tiling 
that  we  have  seen  or  heard  of,  and  most 
of  all,  it  undermined  our  inamortahty. 
His  way  ends  our  old  lives  in  a  moment; 
because  if  you  take  away  our  anger,  our 
greed,  our  hatred,  our  getting  on,  our 
eating  the  black  man,  our  biting  the 
white  woman,  our  sermon-preaching, 
our  amusements  with  young  ladies,  our 
walking  to  church,  our  tlu-oat-cutting, 
our  afternoon  tea-parties,  and  all  the 
tools  we  have  made  for  killing  other 
people,  and  the  medicine  for  kiUing 
ourselves, — if  you  take  away  all  our 
good  deeds,  —  we  know  what  they  are, 
—  if  YOU  take  all  these  arts  and  fancies 
away   from   a   man,   if  you   take   them 


ii4       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

away  you  will  leave  no  man  at  all,  you 
will  leave  nothing. 

"Ah!  but  my  soul,  Mr.  Thomas,  you 
have  quite  forgotten  my  soul;  surely 
when  the  labours  and  little  amusements 
of  my  life  are  taken  away,  my  soul 
will  Hve.  When,  as  a  good  man  tired 
with  all  my  self-sacrifice,  tired  with 
all  my  good  deeds,  tired  with  all  my 
kind  treatment  of  httle  children,  I 
leave  my  poor  worn-out  body,  is  not 
that  the  proper  moment  for  my  soul 
to  save  me?  "  Our  souls,  my  good  people, 
are  the  least  certain  of  all  our  posses- 
sions; our  souls  are  not  possessions  at 
all.  I  will  tell  you  what  my  soul  is. 
My  soul  is  a  waiting,  hesitating,  long- 
ing silence;  it  is  the  most  dehcate,  the 
most  ethereal,  the  most  ready  to  die 
away  of  all  the  silent  noiseless  feet 
that  we  feel  moving  in  our  lives.  And 
it  waits,  and  often  its  flame  goes  out 
while  it  waits.  It  is  not  chained  to 
the  moods;  it  is  the  waiting  silence  in 
us  that  is  free. 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit        ii5 

The  life  of  the  world  is  as  it  is  made 
to  be;  it  can  never  be  anything  else; 
it  can  never  really  change.  The  little 
children  of  the  world  are  happy  some- 
times, when  they  get  what  they  want. 
But  there  is  not  so  very  much  happi- 
ness to  be  given  away  between  the 
stars,  and  there  is  a  very  vast  deal  of 
misery. 

This  is  our  immortality,  because  all 
the  feelings  are  really  exactly  the  same 
to  everyone,  though  some  of  course 
feel  more  and  some  less. 

When  a  Prime  Minister  succeeds  in 
negotiating  a  secret  Treaty  of  AUiance 
somewhere  or  other,  for  the  good  of  the 
war-outfit  trade  of  his  country,  and 
the  other  names  and  seals  are  duly  set 
to  it,  the  exalted  feehngs  of  this  good 
Prime  Minister  are  exactly  the  same 
as  those  of  our  chimney  sweep  —  dead 
now,  honest  man  —  when  he  has  brought 
down  from  our  parlour  chimney  with 
one  good  jerk  a  large  quantity  of  soot. 
And  when  an  old  lean  woman,  the  lean- 


ii6       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

est  in  the  village,  slinks  home  with  a 
few  stolen  sticks  from  the  squire's 
wood,  her  feeling  of   exultation    is  just 

the  same  as  Mr. 's  feehng  when  he 

has  made  a  corner  in  wheat,  in  Wall 
Street,  a  place  I  seem  to  have  heard  of. 
A  Gentleman  Farmer  riding  home  from 
market  in  liis  motor,  after  having  sold 
a  cow  at  a  good  war  price,  that  has 
gored  one  of  his  milk  hands  the  day 
before,  feels  just  hke  a  naughty  girl 
who  has  successfully  robbed  a  foohsh 
young  man  of  his  gold  watch,  in  a  flat 
in  Houndsditch. 

We  share  all  our  good  actions  with 
other  people,  just  as  we  share  the  air 
that  we  breathe.  All  our  actions  are 
made  of  exactly  the  same  stuff,  like 
the  stars,  —  the  eternal  stuff  out  of 
which  everything  is  made,  everything 
except  the  hghtning  that  destroys  them. 
To  that  lightning  Jesus  opened  His 
bosom;  it  struck  dead  all  His  im- 
mortahty;  in  one  flash  it  sent  a  new 
wonder  through  the  old  immortal  stuff 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Ilermil        117 

of  which  He  was  made.  AIi!  there  was 
irony  in  tliat  shaft  of  hght  from  that 
other  place,  for  it  left  only  one  feeling 
the  same  in  Jesus;  one  fcehng  it  could 
not  kill;  one  feeling  that  He  had  in 
common  with  all  men  even  unto  the 
end,  —  I  mean  the  feehng  of  sorrow. 

So  great  is  the  charm  of  really  dying 
that  the  ordinary  death  of  a  man  is  a 
little  thing  in  comparison.  The  feelings 
are  gay  or  sad,  wicked  or  good  in  every 
man;  they  are  over  all  the  earth.  Of 
course,  the  bodies  that  hold  them 
change  because  the  bodies  wear  out; 
but  the  feelings  are  always  hungry, 
always  the  same,  always  yourself.  When 
the  squire's  new  motor  makes  you  skip 
into  a  muddy  ditch,  the  squire  feels 
just  like  you  feel  when  you  make  Mr. 
Thomas  walk  by  your  side  in  the  gutter; 
and  the  feelings  of  men  do  not  die. 

The  feelings  or  the  moods  of  God,  as 
I  used  to  call  them  —  it  is  natural  to 
me  to  change  my  words  a  httle  —  must 
have  some  kind  of  bottle  to  hold  them; 


ii8       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermil 

" 

they  have  you,  with  your  beating  heart, 
your  brain,  your  nerves,  and  your  bones, 
that  are,  I  fear,  getting  a  httle  too  stiff 
to  enjoy  dancing.  They  have  you,  and 
they  make  you  dance,  as  they  do  every- 
one else.  They  even  made  Him  dance  a 
httle  round  a  barren  fig-tree,  but  not  in 
a  way  that  pleased  the  people. 

At  first  the  people  thought  Him  a 
quack  doctor  that  did  not  want  to  be 
paid  for  His  work,  that  went  about 
heahng  for  fun;  and  then  they  thought 
Him  a  crank;  and  then  a  mischief- 
maker;  and  last  of  all  an  ahen  in  the 
world. 

Is  it  not  strange  that  only  a  man  who 
has  felt  the  hghtning  and  who  has  felt 
the  immortal  moods  fall  from  him,  — all 
save  the  mood  of  sorrow,  — is  it  not 
strange  that  this  is  the  sort  of  man 
that  loves  the  world,  that  really  under- 
stands the  world,  and  accepts  the  world .^ 
And  He  can  even  love  the  people  who 
think  they  are  good;  and  what  must  be 
more   easy,  He  can  also  love  the   bold 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit       iiQ 


sinner;  and  He  alone  can  kiss  without 
fear  the  shamed  form  of  tired  outraged 
bitterness.  He  can  love  all  of  it,  —  He 
the  one  that  bled  so  soon.  The  most 
terrible  pang  of  all,  pity  —  the  flower  of 
sorrow  —  that  we  who  have  the  ever- 
lasting feehngs  dare  not  endure.  He 
endured  it.  And  pity  for  the  jackal. 
It  is  easier,  far  easier,  to  pity  a  white 
sick  child  than  a  red  monster  of  greed. 
He  could  pity  us  because  we  all  feel 
so  safe  in  the  world. 

How  we  all  enjoy  the  sense  of  secur- 
ity that  it  gives  to  know  that  everyone 
has  the  same  feehngs  as  oneself.  We 
know  aU  the  kindly,  loving  feelings  of 
our  friends;  they  are  the  same  feelings 
as  ours,  because  they  are  ours;  and  we 
are  all  quite  safe  with  one  another. 
Sometimes,  perhaps,  in  an  iU  hour,  a 
mass  of  men  who  have  had  bad  dreams 
in  the  night  about  bears  and  hons 
want  to  march  to  the  sea-side;  and 
another  mass  of  men,  feehng  their  in- 
terests he  in  another  direction,   oppose 


120        The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

them;  and  tliey  all  feel  just  alike.  The 
others  may  have  dreamt  of  great  eagles. 
All  these  proceed  quite  calmly  to  cast- 
ing each  his  millions  through  the  fire  of 
Hell  itself. 

These  moving  coloured  pictures  of 
Human  Madness  make  a  ghastly  show 
when  they  happen  to  come  to  pass; 
only  we  all  learn  from  watching  them 
what  our  feehngs  are  and  what  they 
can  do.  They  can  tear  our  bodies  to 
pieces  en  masse;  and  instead  of  going 
out  with  swords  and  spears  to  judge 
the  moods  of  God,  we  only  talk  to 
each  other  about  the  wickedness  of 
other  countries. 

Yes,  there  is  something  in  the  desire 
of  Jesus  to  escape  and  to  die.  And  to 
this  desire,  and  to  this  longing,  do  the 
priest  natures  of  the  world  come;  here 
and  there  out  of  all  manner  of  holes  in 
the  rocks,  out  of  all  manner  of  minds, 
they  move  towards  the  annihilation  of 
themselves. 

From    whence    comes    the    hghtning 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit       121 

that  slings  to  death  the  feehngs  that 
live  forever?  So  asks  the  young  man 
void  of  understanding  with  the  leer  of 
an  angler  over  the  dark  waters.  Ah! 
that  is  easier  asked  than  answered. 
Bui  il  may  be,  —  I  am  not  sure,  —  but 
it  may  be  that  even  the  moods  of  God 
end  somewhere  I  Shall  not  the  immortal 
feehngs  have  an  end  somewhere  in 
some  men?  Or  is  it  the  beginning  of  a 
new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  that  pass- 
eth  man's  understanding?  I  do  not 
know;  in  this  place  even  the  priest 
must  do  what  other  little  foohsh  cliil- 
dren  do;  he  must  go  out  into  the  garden 
by  the  big  door. 

What  I  do  know  is,  that  there  is 
something  more  God-like  about  the 
hghtning  that  kills  in  a  moment,  than 
about  all  the  feehngs  that  hve  forever. 
Sometimes  I  think  that  it  is  the  glorious 
presence  of  utter  absolute  extinction,  of 
death  —  that  is,  real  death  —  that  gives 
the  magic  to  the  hghtning. 

I  wonder,  do  the  moods  of  God  tire 


122        The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

of  their  manifold  disguises  in  man? 
Do  they  begin  to  find  the  eternal  mo- 
tion in  clay  bodies  hard  to  bear?  Does 
He  desire  to  die?  And  did  He  choose 
the  man  who  called  Him  Father  for 
His  last  home?  Did  the  everlasting 
moods  that  are  God  will  a  grave  as 
well  as  a  birthplace  in  man?  Did  He 
at  last  desire  His  own  end,  and  did  He 
begin  to  die  in  Jesus?  Perhaps,  who  can 
say? 

The  moods  may  themselves  want  to 
turn  aside  and  to  sleep,  —  never  to 
rise  again,  never  again  to  torment  them- 
selves and  the  clay  that  they  live  in. 
I  do  not  know;  the  exultation  that  the 
lightning  vision  brings  into  being  can- 
not be  explained  in  words;  it  may  be 
an  end  or  it  may  be  a  beginning.  To 
Jesus  it  certainly  gave  sometimes  one 
and  sometimes  another  of  these  thoughts. 
I  think  He  longed  for  it  to  be  a  token, 
a  promise  of  something  more  wonder- 
ful even,  than  the  end  of  God.  He 
longed  for  it  to  be  a  promise  of  new 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Ilermii        128 

life.  It  may  have  been  such  a  promise, 
or  it  may  have  been  a  promise  of  death. 
One  thing  seems  to  be  quite  sure,  and 
that  is  that  the  vision  has  more  in  it 
than  the  simple  death  or  life  of  one 
creature.  Everyone  feels  that  the  body 
and  the  life  of  Jesus  were  a  battle  ground 
more  terrible  than  that;  and  that  the 
happenings  in  Him  surpassed  anything 
that  has  ever  before  happened  in  man. 
If  the  everlasting  moods  did  indeed 
find  in  Him  a  willing  sacrifice,  an  altar 
where  they  could  be  quite  burnt  out, 
no  wonder  that  His  Ways  were  very 
httle  understood  by  the  people. 

Why  Jesus  is  a  figure  of  such  in- 
tensely human  interest  to  mankind  is 
because  He  stands  always  at  the  part- 
ing of  the  ways.  In  Him  end,  it  may 
be,  the  everlasting  moods;  in  Him,  it 
may  be,  God  himself  ends;  or  the  sud- 
den hghtning  of  a  supreme  joy  begins. 
And  His  kind  of  life  was  ever  the  op- 
posite of  man's  doings  and  sayings. 
He  Hved  in  order  to  destroy  man's  im- 


12-4        The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

mortal  ways,  and  He  stabbed  every- 
where, wherever  He  saw  human  greed 
everlasting. 

If  anyone  deserved  a  blessing  upon 
earth,  it  was  in  His  eyes  the  sinner. 
He  saw  that  sin  ends  quicker  and 
changes  quicker  than  righteousness;  and 
the  righteousness  of  the  leaders  of  the 
people  was  to  Him  the  most  lasting 
and  the  most  intolerable  ugliness  that 
He  saw  anywhere. 

Everyone  knows  how  His  words  have 
been  twisted  and  turned  exactly  and 
completely  inside  out.  Of  course  they 
have;  men  do  not  give  up  their  greed 
for  nothing;  and  they  soon  began  to 
think  that  His  Heaven  was  a  shadow 
in  the  water,  a  large  shadow  of  that 
hunk  of  meat  that  they  with  their  dog- 
hke  teeth  held  in  their  half-opened 
mouths.  And  some  amongst  men,  the 
good  saints  and  hermits,  the  good  Bish- 
ops of  the  flock,  let  their  hunk  of 
meat  drop  for  the  shadow,  like  the  dog 
in   the   fable;    and   then   there   was   no 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit        io5 

help  for  it.  They  had  to  beheve  in 
Heaven,  and  so  they  waved  the  fairy 
wand  of  immortahty  over  the  place 
where  their  iiunk  of  meat  sank;  and 
they  present  to  us — these  very  good  ones— 
rather  an  odd,  and  not,  I  fear,  very 
noble  picture;  for  while  they  pretend 
to  beheve  in  the  shadow  of  another  life, 
all  the  time  they  are  digging  their 
snouts  in  the  mud  (they  have  now 
changed  to  swine),  and  searching  for 
theu"  lost  meat  as  the  monev-lenders 
in  that  old  French  book  searched  for  rusty 
nails.  They  are  not  altogether  beauti- 
ful objects  for  our  contemplation  here 
upon  earth.  We  prefer  the  more  hon- 
est sinners.  Avoid  the  good  ones,  httle 
girls  and  boys  of  the  earth,  and  go  and 
dance  with  those  that  take  and  eat 
honestly  the  hon's  share.  We  know 
that  Lion;  there  is  something  honest 
and  open  about  him;  the  immortal 
laughters  surround  him  as  he  gambols 
and  frolics  in  new-mown  hay.  High 
up  to  his  god-like    mouth    he  hfts  the 


126       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

holy  bottle  of  human  life.  He  drinks. 
His  life  is  not  here  nor  there;  he  hves 
truly  and  entirely  himself  in  every 
moment. 

There  is  no  cry  in  his  heart,  "What 
can  I  do  to  be  saved .►^"  He  is  content; 
the  earth  is  good  enough  for  him.  He 
spends  his  treasure;  he  does  not  hide  it, 
as  a  certain  country  did  their  treasure 
in  a  fortress,  until  the  next  war;  he 
spends  it  all,  and  when  the  next  war 
comes,  he  dies;  that  is  the  end  of  the 
hon. 

Between  the  lion  of  life  and  Jesus, 
that  sad  Stranger,  there  are  innumer- 
able moving  pictures  of  httle  men  and 
women.  Children  of  the  earth,  I  would 
have  you  go  to  the  sad  Stranger  when 
the  moods  of  the  Father  get  their  claws 
full  of  your  blood.  In  one  way  this 
Stranger  is  like  the  hon;  He  is  not 
afraid  of  the  Father.  Go  to  Him;  He 
will  give  to  you  what  no  other  man  has 
ever  dared  to  give;  He  will  give  you 
Himself. 


The  SolUoqay  of  a  Hermit        127 

Remember  before  you  take  Him  what 
He  has  done.  Remember  His  crime; 
remember  His  sin;  remember  that  He 
has  in  a  moment  put  an  end  to  the 
world.  No  wonder  that  when  the  ani- 
mal instinct  of  the  herd  became  awake, 
when  they  began  to  understand  what 
He  was  doing,  that  they  killed  Him  and 
freed  Barabbas.  "To  the  cross  with 
Him!"  they  cried  out,  "He  threatens 
our  very  Jehovah,"  which  was  only  too 
true.  And  He  did  more  than  threaten; 
He  slew.  He  broke  in  upon  God  with  a 
fierce  fire,  a  fire  more  fierce  than  God's 
when  He  breaks  in  upon  men.  He 
knows,  this  Son  of  Man,  that  a  moment 
of  destruction  is  better  than  many  years 
of  creating;  for  the  soul  of  a  great 
work  of  art  feels  more  of  its  Hfe  when 
the  shells  are  bursting  upon  it  than 
when  the  sober  eyes  of  good  sightseers 
peer  and  blink  about  it  and  the  beads 
of  the  prayers  rattle  in  its  long  nave. 

Then  the  destroyer  meets  the  creator 
in  the  great  awakening;  these  two  heroic 


128       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

ones  hold  hands  at  last;  their  souls  meet 
and  end.  Nothing,  not  even  the  moods 
of  God,  can  find  its  true  soul  until  it 
is  destroyed;  and  even  the  lion  of 
laughter  that  drinks  for  ever  the  cup  of 
earth's  richest  wine  becomes  a  Httle 
fat  clown  with  pink  cheeks,  like  a 
dancer  in  a  show,  when  the  two  terrible 
ones  meet,  the  creator  and  the  destroyer. 

When  we  see  the  work  that  Jesus  has 
done,  when  we  see  the  great  white 
throne  rent  and  torn  and  lying  like  any 
other  broken  chair  at  our  feet,  when 
we  see  the  temple  whereon  the  creative 
mind  a  little  overstepped  its  mark  in 
decoration  nothing  but  scarred  walls, 
when  we  see  all  this  as  we  do  see  it, 
we  know  that  a  soul  has  felt  its  life 
burn,  and  its  death  cool  it  forever. 

This  is  what  we  come  to  in  His  life. 
He  seemingly  had  no  fear  of  the  great, 
the  powerful,  the  almighty;  the  im- 
mense terrible  coils  of  the  immortal 
snake  had  no  terrors  for  Him.  The 
moods  fierce   and   utterly   bhnd   stayed 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit       129 

their  fatalistic  dancing  in  Him;  He 
died  to  break  tlie  power  of  God.  And 
now  the  moods  creep  silently  in  the 
earth;  they  cannot  sting  as  they  used 
to;  they  can  hve  immortal  as  they 
used  to  live  in  man;  but  here  hes  the 
difference,  —  they  have  been  conquered. 

Many  an  artist  no  doubt  looks  with 
sorrow  at  the  fall  of  the  great  wild 
monster  moods,  the  Old  Testament  of 
man's  history,  the  blind  fierce  hidden 
history  of  his  beginning;  the  old  Crea- 
tor creating  out  of  the  bottom  of  the 
sea  and  upwards,  tlirough  all  times, 
tlirough  all  minds.  How  wildly  He 
created,  and  with  what  wasteful  profu- 
sion, we  all  know.  We  all  know  the 
bhndness  of  Him  that  used  to  sit  on 
High,  and  now  it  may  be  that  He  of 
His  own  free  will  has  entered  into  the 
son  of  man  in  order  to  end  His  long 
reign;  perhaps  He  has  become  tired  of 
Himself,  and  His  tiredness  at  some  time 
or  another  we  all  feel. 

And  what  do  any  of  us  know  about 


i3o       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

ending  and  beginning?  I  see  that  it 
may  have  happened  like  that;  I  see  a 
difference  in  the  world  since  He  hved ;  I 
even  think  I  see  the  moods  themselves 
begin  to  take  a  new  turn,  consoling, 
hberating,  and  even  becoming  free  men. 
I  see  in  the  new  order,  the  Babe  of 
Joy,  that  takes  the  place  of  the  terrible 
Majesty  of  the  past;  I  see  the  awful 
Majesty  of  the  Creator  come  into  our 
own  Grange  mead,  and  he  down  amidst 
a  joyous  crowd  of  buttercups  and  red 
clover,  dimly  conscious  of  a  new  be- 
ginning, and  of  the  laughter  of  the 
maidens  in  the  village  nearby.  There  is, 
I  may  tell  you,  a  higher  art  in  the  Babe 
of  Joy  than  in  all  the  deep  wild  cruelty 
of  the  old  order;  and  after  all  is  said, 
there  was  too  much  of  a  bully's  rod 
and  not  enough  of  a  child's  laughter  in 
those  old  days.  And  surely  no  one  is 
better  pleased  than  God  Himself  to 
come  up  and  find  that  His  terrible 
moods  have  not  destroyed  all  the  Babe- 
like laughter  upon  earth. 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit       i3i 

We  can  bless  life  when  we  see  that 
the  moods  have  lost  their  grip  upon  the 
mind;  we  can  bless  life  when  we  see 
man's  immortality  end  and  true  joy 
begin;  we  can  bless  hfe  when  we  see 
daisies  and  buttercups  grow  between 
the  walls  of  our  best  works  of  art,  that 
the  shells  have  let  a  httle  hght  into. 
Do  you  remember  He  talked  about  de- 
stroying the  temple  and  building  it  in 
three  days,  —  the  Golden  temple  of  Solo- 
mon, filled  with  the  labour  of  a  million 
artists.  He  came  hke  a  shell  into  that 
old  great  habitation  of  fierce  Godhead,  — 
that  old  temple  built  up  in  the  mind 
of  man,  filled  with  the  work  of  count- 
less builders;  and  everywhere,  where 
His  heart's  blood  fell,  the  temple  was 
destroyed.  What  cared  He  for  the 
decorations  round  the  base  of  the  col- 
imins?  What  cared  He  for  here  a  pome- 
granate and  there  a  pomegranate  at 
the  hem  of  the  garment?  What  cared 
He  for  the  golden  rods  and  brackets.^ 

A    sigh    of   great    content    comes    up 


i32        The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermil 

from  our  Grange  mead,  where  God  lies 
amongst  buttercups  and  listens  to  the 
naughty  laughter  of  little  village  boys; 
I  cannot  see  the  least  willingness  on 
His  part  to  leave  the  scent  of  the  May 
clover,  in  order  to  go  and  look  at  old 
Churches;  but  I  do  notice  that  He  turns 
a  little  on  one  side  to  watch  a  young 
man  and  maid  take  the  path  that  leads 
to  the  tavern;  and  He  looks  at  them 
as  though  they  really  were  His  children. 
They  loiter  a  httle  by  the  gate,  and  He 
lies  back  again  with  His  white  hands 
gently  resting  upon  the  warm  red  clover. 

In  the  Old  Testament,  the  old  Order, 
the  moods  were  hemmed  in  and  not 
allowed  to  hve  a  natural  hfe  in  the  free 
air;  they  were  hemmed  in  until  they 
gathered  strength  to  burst;  they  were 
like  a  terrible  lake  of  black  waters 
that  filled  and  filled  from  beneath, 
until  it  at  last  burst  all  doors;  the  old 
story  of  the  flood  may  have  had  a  mean- 
ing of  this  kind. 

The  hatred  and  malice,  the  ungovern- 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Ilermil        i33 

able  rage  of  man,— the  rage  of  getting 
more  than  his  neighbour, —  tliat  no  painted 
lying  civihzation  can  assuage;  the  rage 
of  a  suppressed  country,  being  denied  a 
proper  proportion  of  the  earth's  sur- 
face; the  rage  of  another  country  that 
the  first  should  want  any  more;  the 
immortal  greed  shut  up  under  the  sup- 
posed tameness  of  man;  all  the  black 
terrible  moods  have  a  way  of  bursting 
their  chains  at  times;  of  getting  loose 
with  a  sound  and  a  horrible  cry  of 
bloody  rage.  The  old  prophets  de- 
hghted  in  it;  they  wallowed  up  to  their 
necks  in  the  black  waters  and  enjoyed 
it.  The  people  did  not  listen;  do  the 
people  ever  listen  until  it  is  too  late.^ 
And  then  their  mangled  bodies  strew 
the  earth,  in  the  day  when  the  black 
waters  rush  out  with  a  horrible  sound, 
and  over  all  the  Earth  there  is  black 
smoke  and  death  and  an  evil  stench. 

Jesus  saw  the  danger  of  all  ill  con- 
tent being  saved  up  and  prepared  in 
man's  mind,    and   He   advised   men   to 


1 34       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 


act  naturally  like  the  flowers;  and  to 
hate  and  to  love  like  children,  forget- 
ting everyone  his  quarrel  when  the 
night  comes.  He  turned  the  sword 
with  wise  justice  into  the  heart  of  Him 
that  created  it. 

But  alas,  the  moods  are  a  many- 
headed  monster,  and  to-day  the  black 
waters  have  burst  out  again  amongst 
men.  He  could  only  give  to  men  the 
charm  that  can  slay  them.  I  want  to 
be  able  to  bless  all  life  truly  and  whole- 
heartedly as  He  blessed  it;  I  want  to 
be  able  to  bless  the  sinner  as  well  as 
the  victim  of  sin;  I  want,  as  every  good 
priest  should  want,  to  be  glad  when  I 
see  any  sign  of  Joy  anywhere  in  the 
earth. 

I  want  to  bless  all  the  moods  of  God, 
for  these  too,  immortal  as  they  are,  will 
one  day  desire  to  end. 

I  do  not  say  wicked  things  when  I 
speak  of  God  coming  down  from  His 
great  white  Throne  of  Majesty  and 
Power,  and  resting  in  our  mead  beside 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Ilermil       i35 


the  dairy  cows,  who  look  at  Iliin  with 
their  quiet  soft  eyes;  I  mean  no  harm. 
To  those  who  prefer  to  keep  Him  as 
He  once  was  in  order  to  preserve  a 
more  artistic  effect,  I  have  nothing  to 
say;  no  doubt  they  know  best;  but  I 
prefer  to  think  of  Him  as  watching 
with  a  true  Father's  love  the  Babe  of 
Joy  that  will  one  day  grow  up  out  of 
His  old  creation,  —  The  Babe  of  Joy  that 
has  taught  Him  akeady  that  a  child's 
laughter  is  of  more  value  than  ever- 
lasting life. 

This  is  a  day  of  new  Values;  the  old 
days  of  greed,  of  getting  and  keeping, 
will  end;  the  old  days  of  holding  one's 
self,  of  hugging  one's  self,  of  Hving  one's 
self,  will  end.  What  a  time  it  was 
when  man's  whole  hope  of  happiness 
was  to  hve  forever;  to  always  go  on 
helping  the  same  body  out  of  the  same 
dish  forever  and  ever;  and  to  that 
happiness  the  immortal  moods  have 
trained  the  clay  pots.  They  have  put 
into  us  tlieir  unmortal  feehngs  so  strong, 


i36       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

that  even  now  as  I  write,  I  want  to  go 
on  living  for  another  day,  till  to-morrow. 
And  this  is  what  we  all  say  —  "till 
to-morrow."  I  cannot  welcome  extinc- 
tion, because  for  millions  of  years  the 
immortal  feehngs  have  been  desiring 
more  and  more  hours,  more  and  more 
to-morrows. 

When  I  tliink  of  Jesus,  the  burden 
falls.  I  do  not  think  of  extinction. 
I  think  of  the  moment;  I  think  of  how 
He,  in  one  life,  ended  the  stagnation  of 
immortality.  I  long  to  live  a  moment 
in  Him  unfettered  and  free.  Have  I 
explained  myself  enough  now.^  Or  have 
I  left  only  a  mist  about  the  eyes  and  a 
madness  in  the  heart .^^  I  can  assure 
you  now,  if  you  have  not  guessed  it 
before,  little  and  great  brethren,  that 
instead  of  meaning  no  harm,  I  mean  a 
great  deal  of  harm.  Have  we  not  had 
nearly  enough  of  the  everlasting  feuds, 
of  the  everlasting  jealousy  of  the  moods 
of  God;  would  it  not  be  better  to  use 
our  own  minds  and  to  reason  away  from 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit       187 

these  thiiigsP  W  Inch  is  better,  I  wonder, 
to  lie  for  a  moment  where  all  our 
finest  buttercups  grow,  or  to  go  on 
with  our  greed  and  getting  and  hating 
forever?  If  we  took  His  road,  and  gave 
up  our  eternal  occupations,  our  ever- 
lasting work,  our  immortal  getting;  and 
in  a  moment  spent  that  which  we  did 
not  gather,  in  a  moment  of  Joy  — a 
moment  that  cannot  be  lost  because  it 
is  true  Joy  — would  it  not  be  better  to 
spend  ourselves  for  it,  for  such  a  mo- 
ment? But,  dear  brothers,  the  pleasure  of 
our  lives  is  in  hating.  We  know^  a  little 
about  the  merry  goblins  in  the  bottom 
of  our  hearts;  we  don't  want  to  cast 
them  out  in  a  hurry.  The  moods  are 
with  us;  we  play  on  their  side  when  we 
amuse  ourselves  with  our  httle  frolics. 
It  is  most  easy  to  call  everything 
degeneration  that  is  not  found  in  the 
heart  of  a  cruel  man.  It  is  most  easy 
to  call  everything  madness  that  is  out- 
side the  pompous  throned  power  of 
man's    immortal    behef.      It    is    really 


1 38       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

quite  easy  to  call  everything  mystic 
stupidity,  because  it  just  happens  to 
be  not  exactly  our  way  of  treating  danc- 
ing girls  in  the  night.  I  do  not  dispute 
with  tliis;  I  do  not  want  to  slay  any 
child's  joy;  neither  did  He.  He  came 
to  free  the  world  and  to  give  Joy;  not 
afterwards,  —  He  knew  no  afterwards,  — 
but  now.  I  know  my  hatred  of  others ;  I 
know  my  greed  for  myself;  and  I 
know,  my  masters,  that  we  all  have  the 
same  feehngs;  I  want  to  break  up  these 
feehngs  and  take  hold  of  the  new  Joy. 

When  we  feel  the  gladness  of  our 
greed,  when  we  feel  we  have  managed 
well  a  good  business  matter  after  the 
manner  of  the  world,  when  we  feel 
we  have  done  something  very  well 
indeed,  perhaps  robbed  a  few  milHon 
homes  of  their  halfpence,  how  the 
greed  gobhns,  old  as  God  Himself, 
cringe  and  lick  and  fawn  upon  us;  for 
have  we  not  been  carrying  on  their  game 
a  httle  farther.^  "And  a  very  good  game 
too,"  you  will  say.     Well,  is  itP 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit        189 

I  seem  to  hear  at  tliis  moment  the 
clamour  of  something  not  altogether 
good;  I  see  torn  bodies,  broken,  buried 
in  blood,  that  were  a  year  ago  very 
thoughtless  young  men;  and  I  see  the 
evil  eye  of  our  greed  blinking  and  cruel; 
you  have  not  got  to  go  far  from  where 
I  write  to  see  its  work.  Your  Uttle 
happy  ways,  your  little  business  ways, 
your  little  rather  long  immortal  ways, 
are  a  cause  of  all  this,  my  brothers. 
Without  the  feehngs  that  you  guard  so 
jealously  from  madness,  (why  are  you 
all  so  afraid  of  madness?)  this  could 
not  have  happened.  Without  the  feel- 
ings you  enjoy,  the  shocking  face  of  a 
woman  I  once  saw  in  an  alley  of  a  great 
town  could  never  have  had  written 
upon  it  agony  unquenchable,  agony 
eternal.  The  moods  of  God  have  caused 
all  this;  they  are  causing  it  still. 

And  our  feelings  that  go  on  forever,  — 
that  we  enjoy  so  much,  —  are  they  worth 
all  this  terror  and  horror  and  blood; 
do  they  not  after  all  lick  up  with  their 


i/io       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

evil  tongues  all  the  waters  of  real  joy 
out  of  our  lives;  do  they  not  take  in 
the  cruel  grip  of  their  eternal  desires 
all  our  best  children? 

Look  at  the  boldness  of  Jesus;  He 
too  was  terrible,  like  a  burning  of  the 
firmament  amongst  the  worlds;  think 
of  His  courage,  this  lion  in  the  desert; 
the  disputes  He  had  with  the  lawyers 
were  nothing;  what  He  really  did  was 
to  stand  in  the  way  of  the  eternal 
moods.  He  bade  them  get  out  of  His 
way;  He  would  have  a  New  Heaven 
and  a  new  Earth;  He  would  have  the 
feelings  of  a  flower;  child-like  laughter, 
like  one  of  these  little  ones,  to  whom 
every  moment  is  an  eternity  and  whose 
every  hour  is  a  life  everlasting. 

He  stood  alone  to  stem  the  torrent  of 
greed,  the  greed  of  hving  forever.  "He 
that  saveth  his  soul  shall  lose  it."  And 
instead  of  the  greed  of  living.  He  built  up 
out  of  the  fire  of  His  heart  the  joy  of  fife. 

Consider  the  day  of  joy  that  He 
created   for   us;    how  freely   and   light- 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Ilermii       i^i 

heartedly  we  can  now  cull  the  flowers 
after  He  has  shewn  us  the  way.  The 
deep  hidden  waters  of  the  inner  dark- 
ness that  hved  underground  like  a 
great  earth  monster,  he  brought  out 
into  the  sun.  And  how  hke  snails  the 
eternal  feelings  creep  and  creep  in  our 
lives;  how  they  force  us  to  hide,  and  to 
plan  and  to  corrupt;  how  they  force 
us  to  pass  the  day  in  gloom,  because 
we  are  thinking  of  the  morrow,  because 
of  the  year  that  is  to  come.  "Take 
no  thought  for  the  morrow."  I  cannot 
help  seeing  almost  a  vision,  as  I  write 
of  the  wonder  that  He  did.  And  when 
I  think  of  the  fears;  the  heavy  longings 
for  good  things;  our  eternal  looking 
forward;  our  cringing  to  time;  our 
continual  longing  for  future  gain;  when 
I  think  how  oppressed  we  all  are,  how 
filled  to  the  brim  with  the  feehngs  that 
want  to  go  on  forever;  I  do  not  know 
how  I  can  thank  Him  enough,  that 
opened  a  w  ay  for  our  freedom. 

I   cannot   think   how   anyone   can  re- 


1^2       The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

gard  immortality  as  anything  else  but 
an  endless  and  sad  ordeal  of  the  same 
feehngs;  they  go  on  and  on,  and  always 
serve  us  the  same.  They  bring  simple 
peasants  and  quiet  homely  gentlemen 
in  hne  as  fodder  for  the  cannon;  they 
let  off  the  poisonous  gas;  they  drop 
the  bombs  in  the  night;  our  httle  best 
feelings,  yours  and  mine,  are  doing  it. 
Our  feehngs  do  all  this  now;  and  in 
the  past  they  pinned  Him  to  the  Cross. 
But  not  before  He  had  sown  His  hfe's 
blood  in  the  earth;  not  before  His 
death-cry  for  Freedom  had  gone  out 
and  been  heard. 

No  doubt  the  great  Artists,  the  happy 
portrayers  of  man's  deeds  and  ways, 
will  scream  out  with  a  great  rage  at 
the  thought  of  their  old  occupation 
being  gone.  What  will  happen  to  bloody 
rage  and  bhnd  lust  that  gave  them  all 
such  good  copy  for  their  long  nails  i^  For 
was  it  not  ever  the  moods  and  the  feel- 
ings of  man's  deep  black  nature  that 
gave  the  good  workers  in  their  creative 


The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit       i43 

art  the  chance  to  get  human  kind  on 
the  point  of  their  pen? 

Well,  they  will  have  to  change,  that 
is  all.  Jesus  did  not  consider  their 
love  of  God  and  His  ways  when  He 
stood  alone  in  all  the  earth  to  face  and 
destroy  the  moods.  The  artists  that 
have  for  so  long  hved  like  vultures  upon 
the  broken  flesh  and  rotten  carcass  of 
human  despair  must  now  learn  a  new 
trade;  they  must  try  to  rest  awhile  in 
our  Grange-mead  beside  the  dairy  cows, 
and  write  poems,  until  a  little  of  the 
New  Heaven  and  the  New  Earth  enter 
into  them. 

And  meanwhile  let  them  bless  the 
maiden  and  the  young  man  that  again 
loiter  through  the  mead,  for  it  is  now 
evening,  on  their  way  home  from  the 
tavern;  and  let  them  bless  the  naughty 
cliild  that  lingered  for  one  more  soli- 
tary dance  alone  on  the  Green  after 
all  the  others  had  gone. 

THE    END 


G.  ARNOLD  SHAW'S  NEW  PUBLICATIONS 

WOOD  AND  STONE,  A  Romance,  by  John  Cowpeb  Powvs   .  .   $1.80 

This  epoch-making  novel  is  attracting  favorable  com- 
ment [even  from  the  most  conservative  papers  in  America, 
and  the  interest  of  the  public  in  it  may  be  gauged  from  the 
fact  that  a  second  large  edition  was  required  within  three 
weeks  of  publication. 

New  York  Evening  Post:  "  The  novel  is  the  best  that 
one  reviewer  has  read  in  a  good  while." 

New  York  Times:  "  A  book  worth  reading  .... 
Mr.  Powys  is  evidently  a  keen  observer  of  life  and  responsive 
to  all  its  phases.  His  story  shows  a  rich  background,  not 
only  of  observation  but  also  of  philosophy  and  of  imagina- 
tion." 

Boston  Transcript:  "A  writer  of  no  mean  rank.  He  can 
express  philosophy  in  terms  of  narrative  without  prostitu- 
ting his  art;  he  can  suggest  an  answer  without  drawing  a 
moral;  with  a  clearer  vision  he  could  stand  among  the 
masters  in  literary  achievement." 

Philadelphia  Press:  "  Seldom  is  it  granted  a  new  author 
in  the  fiction  field,  even  one  with  the  laurels  of  Mr.  Powys 
on  the  lecture  platform,  to  attain  such  a  remarkable  degree 
of  success.  .  .  .  Mr.  Powys'  style  is  the  style  of 
Thomas  Hardy." 

BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS $2.00 

THE  WAR  AND  CULTURE 60 

Ready  in  Spring,  1916 
A  SECOND  VOLUME  OF  ESSAYS,  by  John  Cowpeb  Powts.  .  .$2.00 

Ready  in  Autumn,  1916 
A  SECOND  NOVEL,  by  John  Cowpeb  Powys 

Ready  in  Autumn,  1916 

MR.  TASKER'S  GODS,  A  Novel  by  Theodore  Fbancis  Powts 

CHILDREN  OF  FANCY,  Poems,  by  I.  B.  Stodghton  Holbobn.  .$2.00 

This  is  a  handsomely  bound  volume  especially  suitable 
for  a  present  to  one  who  knows  the  author  as  a  lecturer. 
It  was  manufactured  for  Mr.  Shaw  by  one  of  the  greatest 
printers  in  Great  Britain,  and  its  cover  design,  stamped  in 
silver  on  blue  buckram,  is  in  Keltic  Art  by  the  author. 
The  MSS.  of  the  poems  were  saved  from  the  Lusitania 
through  Mr.  Holman's  premonition  of  the  disaster;  he  had 
tied  them  with  his  lecture  note-books. 

THE  NEED  FOR  ART  IN  LIFE,  by  I.  B.  Stoughton  Holbobn.  . .    .76 
"  This  is  one  of  the  greatest  little  books  of  the  age.     If 
it  is  not  epoch  making,  it  should  be    .     .     .     the  thought- 
ful man  who  reads  it  will  feel  that  a  new  classic  has  been 
added  to  the  world's  literature." —  Boston  Transcript. 

ARCHITECTURES  OF  EUROPEAN  RELIGIONS, 

by  I.  B.  Stoughton  Holbobn,  $2.00 

Cover  design  and  124  illustrations  by  the  author 

AT  ALL  BOOKSTOEES  OR  DIRECT  FROM 


G.  ARNOLD 


GRAND 
CENTRAL 
SHAW  ^fr-^^JJII^V^        TERMINAL 

PUBLISHER      ni      ^P-^^  PEREJ^Nius       1||      neW  YORK 


'^ 


,:o 


w^^mmrnrthiru.,.,. 


__^A    OOP  642  409 


UNlVEHSr 

lIllTlllllTiiiIll 


l||i|  mill  III 


Y  Q 


3  1210  01276  6810 


